142 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



that they belong to the species described by me, before that time, as 

 Hyponomeuta dpunctella. 



I found the specimens, spotted and unspotted, abundant when in 

 Colorado, but I have none now in my collection. Of the many speci- 

 mens observed by me then I kept but twenty-five, and on my return to 

 Kentucky I found all of these but six ruined. These six I, through 

 Dr. Hagen, donated to the Cambridge Museum, and at mj^ request, Dr. 

 H. submitted them to Mr. Riley for examination, who, admitting that 

 a single female belongs to P. yuccasella, assigns the other five to M. 

 Spunctella, as before stated. I am not, therefore, prepared now to as- 

 sert positively that these five belong to P. yuccasella. I am, however, 

 very confident that whatever the}^ are, they are not H. SjncncteUa. 



To refer these five, and all of the numerous spotted speci- 

 mens observed bj" me in Colorado, to 5pwnctella, would be to assert for 

 that species, hitherto not observed to vary at all, a greater amount of 

 variation than I have asserted to exist in P. yuccasella. The Colorado 

 specimens referred by me to P. yuccasella, and by Mr. Riley to H. 

 opunctella, varied in the number of black spots on the wings from 

 to 13 ; and when all were present were arranged as in figure 1; but 

 there was no variation whatever in the jyosition of any spot. Of the 

 six specimens now in the Cambridge Museum, and which have recently 

 been inspected bj'^ Mr. Riley, one is unspotted, and is admitted to 

 be P. yuccasella ; of the remaining five, one has a single spot, another 

 has three spots, and the others are immaculate, as I learn from Dr. 

 Hagen. I do not know the position of the spots in the two specimens; 

 but when all the spots are present, at least in all the specimens ex- 

 amined by me in Colorado, which had the thirteen spots, their position 

 was invariably as shown in fig. 1. No. 3 is the spot which is most 

 often present. Nos. 6 to 13 inclusive are next in the frequency- of thc4r 

 occurrence, whilst Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5, are frequently absent. The num- 

 ber of the spots is thus very variable, but their position, when present, 

 is constant; but a large proportion of the specimens were immaculate, 



H. Spunctella was described by me from eight specimens received 

 from Texas, and these are the only extant specimens. Mr. Riley 

 has seen one of these eight, and has identified the five Colorado 

 specimens with it, either by comparison with this one, or by compari- 

 son of them with my description of this species. In these eight speci. 

 mens I observed no variation whatever in either the number or posi- 

 tion of the spots, which are represented in fig. 2, A comparison of figs. 

 1 and 2 shows at a glance the difference in the positions of the spots. 

 iVo. 3 is the only spot which is common to the tivo species. No specimen 

 of //. Spunctella, seen as yet, has any spot but the five, and all of them 

 have the five located as in fig. 2, and thus it has none of the thirteen 



