198 Prof. Frey, and some American Teneina. 



should " insist against Prof. Zeller, that" a small portion of an insect, 

 about one eighth of an inch long, is a " darker shade of yellowish " in- 

 stead of a " brownish red," as Prof. Zeller asserts. In fact, no one can 

 successfully paint in words, however profuse, the infinitesimally fine 

 gradations of color among these many-hued beings. The Professor 

 seems to believe fixedly in the fixedness of species, and a specific de- 

 scription is incomplete, brief, or wanting in some other essential quality, 

 which does not enable him to recognize, without trouble, every speci- 

 men of the species, which may be brought before him — however varia- 

 ble the species and however changeable its prismatic hues ; there 

 would seem to be no room for variation in his system, so far as species 

 are concerned, though he is by no manner of means so strict as to 

 genera; most Micro-Lepidopterists attach great importance to the 

 neuration of the wings as determining generic differences. Not so our 

 Professor. I have alluded above to his displacement of Farreciopa 

 robiniella, Clem., and his misplacing it in LithocoUetis as L. gemmea , 

 Fi-ey. The neuration of the species is distinctly and unequivocally 

 that of the genus Gracilaria, it has scarcely a character in common 

 with LithocoUetis, yet the Professor places it in the same generic 

 group Avith true species of LithocoUetis, and even such aberrant species 

 as LithocoUetis ornateUa, which has the neuration unusually simple ; 

 and he includes in the same group a new species, which he calls Litho- 

 coUetis aenigmateUa (an excellent name for such a description !) which, 

 according to his own description, ought only doubtfully, if at all, to be 

 placed in that genus ; thus he groups in LithocoUetis doubtful and 

 true forms of that genus, together with a species having the characters 

 of a Gracilaria, and in this group he describes several new species, and 

 mentions sevei-al others, which he says he can not recognize in the de- 

 scriptions of his American colleagues. Do such new and unrecogniza- 

 ble species belong in LithocoUetis at all ? Was it not an error to place 

 them there? that is, in LithocoUetis, as recognized by all other ento- 

 mologists ; indeed, given such a heterogenous group as will contain 

 Parrectopa robinieUa, Clem., LithocoUetis ArgeidinoteUa, Clem., 

 L. ornateUa, Cham., and L. AenigmateUa, Frey, and what may not be 

 placed in it? In looking up the new and unrecognized species, one 

 would feel no certainty that the true LithocoUetis is the group in which 

 they are to be found they might belong anywhere else, for all this 

 hrochure shows. 



Another idea that the Professor loses no chance of reiterating, is 

 tlie wonderful likeness of the new and old world Teneina, as if he had 

 made a discovery of the "first water." There is nothing whatever 

 new in it ; every man has already learned that much, who has seen a 



