124 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



much easier to circumscribe than to analyse as natural and sharply defined 

 genera. To their characteristic peculiarities belong (after the venation 

 of the wings, etc.) as an easy and evident characteristic, the brush of stiff 

 hairs which springs from beneath the base of the antennae, which Hiibner 

 thought to be, in his definition of Astyci (Verz., p. 102), like the "curve 

 on the cone of the ear." It arises very near the base of the antennae, 

 between them and the upper margin of the eyes, and almost on the place 

 occupied by the ocelli, but a little farther forwards, near the middle of the 

 base of the antennae — the ocelli, when present, lying on the posterior 

 margin. It is developed alike in both sexes, but varies in regard to 

 length, form and color in the different genera and species. As a rule it is 

 black, occasionally mixed with gold, rarely entirely rusty, or pale-yellow. 

 Where it is particularly long and stout, as in Pyrgus, Scclothrix and 

 Nisoniades, it is somewhat curved over the eyes, as if to serve as a shade 

 for them. The inferior hairs are more elongated than the upper ones. It 

 is very short in several Pamphila (Goniloba) species and in the American 

 genus Eudamus (Goniurus), but is not entirely absent from any species 

 examined by me. In some American genera this otherwise simple hair- 

 formed structure, in which the hairs are close set, takes the form of a plate 

 of hairs, by reason of their being spread out at the end, as in Copaeodes 

 sp., Pholisora Scudd. As a short character for this organ, we retain the 

 name given by Hiibner, " Lockchen " [a small lock of hair], although it 

 is only by particular perfection to be compared to a lock of hair. 



The appendage to the anterior tibiae (epiphysis cruralis, schicnblatt- 

 chcn)* a bare, mostly reddish-yellow, blunt thorn-shaped, or lancet-shaped, 

 chitinous plate, projects, in the Hesperidoe, from the middle of the inner 

 side of the tibiae and reaches to their end. It lies quite close to the 

 tibiae, and its free surface is clothed with a flat tuft of hairs, so that the 

 structure is sometimes not readily recognized. Its absence separates two 

 (which perhaps should be united) natural genera, poor in species, from 

 the remainder of the family. 



That the presence or absence of the spurs on the middle of the pos- 

 terior tibiae is of as little use as elsewhere in founding genera, the already 

 described genera will suffice to show. It even seems as if the Hesperidae 

 were destined to add to the, until now, single example of variability in 



I* The tibial epiphysis of Guenee and "f Edwards' Catalogue. — l..| 



