Sphingidag 
Genus LAPARA Walker. 
Head small. Palpi short and slender. Tongue very short 
almost obsolete. Eyes small. Antennae slender. Thorax 
stout and short.' Abdomen long and cylindrical, tapering. Legs 
weak. Fore and mid tibiae spinulose. The larva is without an 
anal horn, cylindrical, tapering slightly from the middle forward 
and backward, pale green, striped with white, and checkered 
with darker green. The caterpillars feed upon various species of 
pine, and are not at all sphingiform in appearance. There are 
reputed to be four species of the genus found in our fauna, two 
of which we figure. L. halicarnice Strecker, of which only one 
specimen is known, which I have recently examined, appears to 
be a somewhat hypertrophied and, in consequence, aborted 
female of L. coniferarum Abbot & Smith. It is very doubtfully 
a valid species. 
(1) L. coniferarum Abbot & Smith, Plate III, Fig. 16, $ . 
(Abbot’s Pine Sphinx.) 
Syn. cana Martyn. 
This species is somewhat variable, especially in the size of 
the females and in the amount of marking upon the fore wings. 
It is a common insect in the foot-hills of the Alleghenies about 
the headwaters of the Potomac River. I found the larvae in great 
abundance upon pines at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, in the 
summer of 1884. It ranges from Canada to Florida and west¬ 
ward into the basin of the Mississippi, but has never been 
reported from any point west of that river, south of Minnesota, 
so far as is known to the writer. 
(2) L. bombycoides Walker, Plate III, Fig. 7, 3. (The 
Bombyx Sphinx.) 
Syn. harrisi Clemens. 
This little hawkmoth, which may easily be recognized from 
the figure we give, has the same geographical distribution as the 
preceding species, and feeds upon the same forms of vegetation 
in the larval stage. 
Lapara pineutn Lintner (Lintner’s Pine Sphinx) is a 
species of which thus far only + wo specimens have turned 
up. They differ from the two species we have figured in 
being wholly devoid of discal streaks and markings upon 
the fore wings. It is believed by recent authorities that these 
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