1865.] 33 



NOTES ON CUBAN SPHINGID.E. 



BY AUG. R. GROTE, 

 Curator of Entomology, Buffalo Society Natural Sciences, etc. 



The lepidopterous insects which form the subject matter of the pre- 

 sent Notice, are contained in the Collection of the Entomological Society 

 of Philadelphia, and were obtained by purchase, together with other 

 very large entomological material, from Prof Poey of Havana, Cuba, 

 through the liberality of the late esteemed scientist Dr. Thomas B. 

 Wilson, and intended by the latter for the scientific uses of the 

 Society. 



My sincere thanks are given to Mr. Stephen Calverley, for bibliog- 

 nostic information, which I have used in writing the present Notice. 

 I am also grateful to my friend Coleman T. Robinson, Esq., for mate- 

 rial aid received, while, with accustomed kindness, Mr. EzraT. Cresson, 

 the well-known Entomologist, has lent me his very acceptable as- 

 sistance. 



Since my present comprehension of the limit of the family Sphin- 

 gidse accords with that given at sufficient length by Dr. Brackenridge 

 Clemens in an able treatise, entitled " Synopsis of North American 

 Sphingidge," published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia, pp, 97 to 189, for 1859, I do not add, where 

 I could only encumber, to a definition the perspicacity of which I 

 much admire. I present but a few remarks, drawn partly from the 

 peculiar locality of the insects that I am about to notice, for conside- 

 ration. 



As understood in the treatise I have above alluded to, this family 

 constitutes a perfect unity, which it loses, when, under any artificial 

 term, we include either the u.^gervdpe (^Sesiidse) or the Zijjsenidse, 

 families in which analogical resemblances — with the one under present 

 consideration, have been mistaken for structural affinities.* 



In examining the representatives of the family Sphinrjidx from the 

 West India Islands, we are struck with the preponderance of those 

 genera which resemble the Noctuidae ; in contrast with the represen- 



* " Annaherungen wie Z. B. die der Sesioideen (.^Igeriidse) und Zygsenen 



^Zygsenidffi) an die Sphinginen (Sphingidse) und dgl. halte ich gera- 



dezu fur unrichtig." H-S. Lepidop. Exot. uov. a. m. cog. p. 56. 



