AMERICAN LEPinOPTERA. 197 



On GRAFTS INTERROSATIONIS and FABRICII of Edwards. 

 Ijy J. A. LINTNER. 



Ill a paper published by Mr. Edwards in the Transactions of the 

 Kntomological Society, Vol. III. No. 1, entitled " Notes on Graptds. 

 C-aurcnm and interrogation!)^ — Far.," exception is taken to my de- 

 termination, as given in a late number of the Transactions, of the 

 large red-wing Grapta as interrofjationis, and the black-wing (^nmhro- 

 sa) as an undescribed species, and the conclusions are drawn by the 

 wiitor, that the latter is the interrogationis of Fab., and the former, 

 the C-aurcum of the same author, which name being preoccupied, 

 may therefore be designated as Fnhricii. A careful consideration of 

 the paper, fails to convince me of the propriety of these conclusions. 



The uncertainty and confusion which attends the G-anrcum of 

 Fab., is almost without a parallel. In 1775, Fabricius gave one line 

 and a half of descriptive text to a butterfly or to a figure of one 

 which he had before him, having on its under surface a golden or a 

 silver character in the form of a or that of an interrogation point 

 (probably the former), which was, or was supposed by him to be the 

 G-aureum described by Linnaius in 1760 : this determination would 

 make of it an Asiatic Vanessa, now generally regarded as identical 

 with the Angelica of Cramer. In 1781, in Spec. Ina.^ it was again 

 referred by him to the same species. In 17^3, in Ent. Sj/st., he 

 continues the same reference, but complicates it by also referring it 

 to a figure of a G-aureum given by Cramer in 177'J of an individual 

 from Jamaica, and of a very different type from the Asiatic species. 



In 1797, Abbot and Smith figure a G-aureum or " American 

 Comma Butterfly," as occurring in(ieorgia and in Virginia, and unite 

 under it both of the above species of Linuaius and Cramer, with this 

 qualification : that inasmuch as " Fabricms, observing the tail to the 

 hind wings of his species, reformed the Linnsean specific character," 

 and " as the specimen of Linnaeus has much less of a [caudal] pro- 

 jection, ******** po.ssibly the Asiatic kind may 

 be distinct from the American." 



In 1819, Godart regarded the G-anreum of Fabricius, as having 

 been erroneously referred to the Linnaean Asiatic species, but as iden- 

 tical with the G-aureum of Cramer and of Abb., Sm., and made of 

 it a male for an American species (assumed to be a female) described 

 by Fabricius in 1798 under the name of interrogationis^ retaining this 

 name for the two "sexes" thus brought together. Of his " male " ho 



THAN3. AMER. EST. SOC. (2G) DECEMBER, 1870. 



