124 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



of congrua did not fit S. antigone, Strecker, but did fit H. cunea, Drury, 

 presuming the latter to be the same as punctatissima, A. & S., and 

 quoting a note of Mr. A. G. Butler's, written in 1875, to the effect that 

 the only specimens then representing congrua in the British Museum 

 collection were a presumably female specimen of S. virginica, without 

 abdomen, and what he " believed to be " a male " variety" of H. cunea. 



With all due respect to these authorities, I do not place any great 

 weight upon conjectures that something is " very likely " the same as 

 something else, or upon a " belief " that one moth is a variety of another, 

 and it is hardly creditable to the custodians of collections in a great 

 national museum which are not open to the public that types can be lost 

 or destroyed. 



In 1890, Mr. J. B. Smith again dealt with these forms in his 

 " Preliminary Catalogue of the Arctiidas of Temperate North America," 

 in the Canadian Entomologist, but, through an error of the printer, 

 overlooked by the proofreader, all the names, whether recognized as good 

 species or only as synonyms, were treated alike and stand apparently as 

 species. (Can. Ent., XXII. , 161-165.) 



In 1 89 1, Dr. Smith issued his " List of the Lepidoptera of Boreal 

 America," and in it listed the Spilosomas as virginica, prima, vestalis, 

 latipennis and antigone, with congrua |, Grote, as a synonym ; and under 

 Hyphantria placed cunea, Druty ; with punctatissima, S. & A.; punctata, 

 Fitch ; congrua, Walk. ; textor, Harr. ; Candida, Walk., and ab. pallida, 

 Pack., as synonyms, the last being an aberrant form which Dr. Packard 

 had described in 1864 under the name of Arctia pallida, in his "Synopsis 

 of the Bombycidse of the United States." (Proc. Ent. Soc. Phil., III., 118.) 



This, then, was the condition of affairs when Dr. Fyles obtained the 

 eggs of antigone in June, 1897, and a specimen of a much-spotted moth 

 of the genus Spilosoma in the Gomin Swamp, and at the annual meeting 

 in the following autumn read a paper under the title of " An Arctian — 

 What is it ?" 



This paper was never published, but in the Canadian Entomologist 

 for May, 1899, appeared a paper by the same author, entitled " Obser- 

 vations upon Spilosoma congrua. Walker," in which Dr. Fyles gave an 

 account of his rearing of these larvae and described the variation among 

 the imagoes and identified them with Walker's species. Of the much- 

 spotted moth taken at the same time as the parent of the larvae, he said 

 that it " presented the exact appearance of the insect which is figured, 



