THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 205 



more conspicuous characters. Such being the nature of this group, we 

 would expect at least to find Californiaria distributed among the different 

 families, but it occurs in the same family ; and in two genera Tephrosia 

 and Boarmia, so intimately related that only an expert Entomologist can 

 separate them correctly in every instance. 



This is not the only case in which this name is repeated by the same 

 author, for in " Contributions towards a Monograph of the Bombycidae 

 of the United States/' Cat if arnica occurs four times, in the genera Pyrr- 

 arcfia, Leucarctia y Phyganidia and Clisiocampa, the first three of which 

 are in the same family, and would have been referred to the same genus, 

 Arctia, ten years ago. Here are fourteen species described by one author 

 under one name, which should not properly have been used at all, for 

 there already exist nine species of Lepidoptera described by previous 

 Entomologists as Californica. In a paper on Geometridae in the 5th 

 Report of the Peabody Academy of Science, we find three species having 

 the name of Sulphur aria, which has already been much used in Lepidop- 

 tera. 



It seems to us that this repetition in species of the same group and 

 country cannot fail to cause confusion, and to render our nomenclature, 

 the condition of which is at present deplorable, still more difficult to 

 straighten out. 



There certainly is no warrant in the works of the writers on Lepidop- 

 tera for such a proceeding, and Guenee, the great authority for Noctuilites 

 and Phalaenites, is scrupulously careful in this regard, and of the hundreds 

 of species which he described, in not a single instance is the name 

 repeated. 



NOTES ON COSMIA ORINA, Guenee. 



BY AUG. R. GROTE., BUFFALO, N. Y. 



Mr. Wm. Saunders has sent me, under the number 115, specimens of 

 a Noctuid "from larvae found on oak, imago July 19th," which I regard 

 as this species. The moth is variable in general colour and the appear- 

 ance of the discal spots, and hence Guen^e's description will not always 

 literally apply. The only difference of importance I can see is that the 

 two median trapezoidal lines on the fore wings are wider apart on the 

 internal margin than in my specimens of the European trapezina. Guenee 



