THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 65 



The booklet which attaches the hind wing to the front one is com- 

 posed of five pieces side by side, like the fingers of a hand. It fits into 

 a fold of the hind border of the front wing, which lies at the termination 

 of the first discoidal vein. 



The observations here recorded were made during the past winter in 

 the Cambridge Museum of Comparative Zoology, while studying under 

 the direction of Dr. H. A. Hagen, to whom I am under lasting obligations 

 for valuable aid and for the use of material and books with which to 

 pursue my work. 



REMARKS ON THE GENERIC CHARACTERS OF THE 



NOCTUID^. 



' BY JOHN B. SMITH, NEW YORK. 



" I can get along very well with the Butterflies, and I know something 

 about Beetles, but the Noctitida were always a great puzzle to me." So 

 writes one of my correspondents, and to the same effect are expressions, 

 both oral and written, from nearly all the collectors I have had any 

 acquaintance with. And yet there is no good reason why the NoduidcB. 

 more than the other famihes or groups should be considered so very 

 difficult. True that the species are often very closely allied, and true also 

 that there is often more difference between variations of one species than 

 there is between valid (so considered at present) species. . Yet there are 

 many excellent characters in the Nodiiidce, easily recognized and readily 

 discerned, which make the placing an unknown species into its proper 

 genus a task of little difficulty 



The truth is that the Nodiiidce are not so difficult a group per se, but 

 the sources of information concerning it are so various, so difficult of 

 access, and so foggy when they have been discovered, that even if the 

 student happens to know the language in which his work is written, the 

 information derived scarce repays the trouble bestowed upon the search. 

 Later writers have done little to Hft the veil which concealed knowledge 

 from the eyes of others. Species there have been described in very large 

 numbers, and genera have been created with exceeding great liberality, 

 and the result is that the beginner is appalled at the chaos which confronts 

 him in Entomology, and takes to Botany or some other branch of natural 



