Cl]e Canabian ^ttti)m0l0gbt. 



VOL. XVIII. LONDON, JUNE, i8S6. No. 6 



SOME NOTES UPON THE SPHINGID^ OF THE UNITED 



STATES. 



BY REV. W. J. HOLLAND, PITTSBURGH, PA. 



I am indebted to my esteemed correspondent, Prof. C. H. Fernald, for 

 a copy of his recent Synopsis of the Sphingidae of New England. I have 

 been greatly pleased with it, and trust that it will meet with that general 

 distribution among the students of our beautiful science which it deserves. 

 In the following lines I wish to present a few observations which the 

 perusal of Prof. Fernald's book suggests. 



Hemaris Tenuis, Grote. 



Prof. Fernald remarks of this species : " The early stages and food 

 plants are unknown." Presuming that the statement of the learned 

 Professor is warranted by an exhaustive search through the literature of 

 the subject, I shall venture to supply from my own observation what 

 strikes me as a surprising deficiency, since Hemaris Tenuis is one of our 

 most abundant species in Western Pennsylvania. 



The food plant is the Snow-berry, SympJioricarpits racemosus, and I 

 took last fall from one bush of this plant over twenty larvas. My breed- 

 ing cages this morning (April 26th) are full of the perfect insects, which, 

 having just emerged from chrysalis, and lost none of the scales which at 

 this stage cover the pellucid parts of the wings, are all of the form 

 ^'fumosa " described by Strecker (Lepidoptera Rhopal. and Heteroceres, 

 pp. 93, 140). Flown specimens, which abound at the lilacs in 

 the grounds near by, are without the " smoky " appearance which 

 led our Reading savant to apply the name, and show themselves unmis- 

 takeably as " clear-wings." 



Larva and Chrysalis. — A part of each larval brood is light apple- 

 green in color ; a part is reddish brown. This phenomenon is often 

 apparent in the larvae of the Sphingidje, and is manifestly not due to the 

 influence of the food plant, as both varieties are found side by side upon 



