THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 85 



XVIII., 215, 1886. My specimen is, I believe, now in the British 

 Museum, and, I think, unlabelled. It is apparently a hoary, boreal form 

 of pudefis, but may also be restricted to Anticosti. I have not had 

 sufficient material to decide the question. 



Sphida obliqua, Walk. 

 Prof. Smith has shown that my identification of our S. obliquata with 

 this species of Walker's is correct, and the species must be known as 

 above. I separate Sphida from Arzamay or, as it must be now known, 

 Belhira, on account of the clypeal tubercle, exactly as Ochria, Hiibn., 

 ( = Gortyna, Auct.,) is separable from Gortyna, Hiibn., { — Hydracia, 

 Auct.) As I use an acknowledged generic character, I do not see why it 

 should here fail of recognition. In some way, now incompiehensible to 

 me, I failed to see Walker's species in 1867, when I was there with a 

 specimen to identify. The drawer may have been overlooked, or the 

 species not then in place — probably the latter, as Mr. Walker was then em- 

 ployed in arranging the material I saw then the type only of Arzama 

 densa, and recognized it at once as allied to our species of Sphida. I did 

 not then know vuhiifica, which I described in 1872 in Philadelphia. I 

 left my type there and there it must yet be. The type of detisa did not 

 recall to me vulnifica, which is more yellow ; I have all along thought 

 these were two species ; one " reddish," smaller perhaps, densa, and 

 another, vubiifica, differently coloured. Of this latter I regarded melano- 

 pyga as a variety with blackish anal tuft. I did not see the type of 

 Bellura gortyfioides, Walk., C. B. M., 32, 465 ; the description more re- 

 sembles vulnifica than that of densa does. As I have not seen my type 

 of vulnifica to compare with my material or with melanopyga, it should 

 be found and studied. I have now myself no, or little doubt, we have to 

 do with a single variable reddish on yellow species, and that Prof. 

 Smith's synonomy will be found to be correct, p. 181, where the name is 

 mispelled gortynides. (Other cases of miswritten names are : tranquila, 

 iox tranquilla ; synochitesy ^ox synochitis ; appasionata, for appassionaia, 

 etc.) From this variable brighter coloured species, Bellura diffusa, Grt., 

 is totally distinct. It has been collected by Mr. Moffat, I believe, in 

 Canada. VVhere my type is now I cannot for the moment recollect. It 

 seems not to be in the British Museum. A type of Sphida obliquata is 

 or was in the Central Park Museum. The Arzamince. then, are a group 

 of noctuid genera with aquatic larvae, having affinities with Nonagria 

 and of a peculiar Bombycid appearance, owing to the tufted female abdo- 



