||t Caitadlaif Jntaindlanbt. 



Vol. XXXII. 



LONDON, MAY, 1900. 



No. 5 



CONTENTS. 



Lyman — An Entomological Muddle 121 



Cockerel! — New Coccidae from Arizona 129 



Moffat — Hydroecia stramentosa 133 



Melander — A Decade of Dolichopodidae 134 



Ashmead — Classification of the Fossorial, 



Predaceous and Parasitic Wasps 145 



Dyar — The Larva of Eustixia pupula 155 



Dyar — Larva; from Hawaii 156 



Toronto Branch — Annual Meeting 158 



Hook Notice — Miss Ormerod's Twenty-third 



Report 159 



AN ENTOMOLOGICAL MUDDLE : A REVIEW. 



BY HENRY H. LYMAN, MONTREAL. 



I fear that any one reading the various papers which have appeared 

 during the past year on the Cunea-Congrua-Antigone-Textor con- 

 troversy would not be very greatly impressed with the lucidity of 

 entomologists. This controversy illustrates remarkably well the difficulty 

 of carrying on a discussion about species or forms whose status is 

 disputed without rendering confusion worse confounded, for the simple 

 reason that different persons use the same name in different senses. For 

 instance, when Dr. Fyles writes of cunea, Drury, he does not mean the 

 insect which Drs. Smith and Dyar understand by the same name, the 

 moth which Harris called the many-spotted ermine moth of' the South, 

 Phal?ena punctatissima, A. & S., but the individual moth which served as 

 Drury's type and which he chooses to believe did not belong to the genus 

 Hyphantria at all, but to have been a Spilosoma, and from this springs 

 much of the misunderstanding which has arisen between these gentlemen. 



In such a case as this, one cannot be too careful to assume nothing 

 and to avoid terms which may be misunderstood. 



There are several questions in connection with these moths which 

 require elucidation, one of which, and to my mind the most interesting, 

 viz., whether textor, Harris, and punctatissima, A. &: S., to use terms of 

 which there can be no doubt, are, as generally believed, merely forms of 

 one species, or, as believed by Harris, distinct species, has been very 

 generally overlooked by these disputants. 



