564 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.86 



absence of any striking differences in these characters left, never- 

 theless, a large residue of species, not closely related, in the genus 

 Gelechia, which thereby became difficult to define concisely. Spuler * 

 states after his description of the genus : "Die Verschiedenheiten im 

 Bau verlangen eine Aufteilung der Arten in mehrere Genera," and 

 several others have pointed this out. On the other hand, Me}' rick ^ 

 discarded even these attempts and lumped 380 species in GeJechla. 



Of late, new species have been described as '''Gelechia species" or 

 ''^GelecMa? sp.," ^ and, as many more new species of this group are yet 

 to be described, it is desirable, both for practical and for taxonomic 

 reasons, that the genus, which contains a number of species of eco- 

 nomic importance, should be divided into its different natural 

 components. 



A study of the genitalia of both sexes reveals characters by which 

 this division can be made, and a more natural arrangement of the 

 numerous species can be effected. A first step toward this was made 

 by Pierce and Metcalfe ^ for the limited British fauna. These 

 authors reduced the number of British species included by Meyrick 

 in Gelechia from 31 to 8. The present paper is a further attempt to 

 divide the genus on genitalic characters, but as it deals mainly with 

 the North American and European species, it is to be expected that 

 additional work along the same lines will be required for the species 

 of other faunas. The resurrection on genitalic characters of nearly 

 all the genera proposed in tliis group by earlier workers, but which 

 have later been discarded and placed as synonyms in Meyrick's re- 

 vision of the family, is one gratifying result of this study. Besides 

 these it has been found necessary to define seven new genera. 



The generic division on genitalic characters does not contradict 

 the characters of venation and mouth parts; on the contrary, the 

 genitalia serve further to support these cliaracters, but it is realized 

 that some of the wing characters are not so stable in this group as 

 hitherto supposed. For examjile. the close ap])roximatioji of veins 

 3 and 4 in the fore wing of Gelechia^ as now restricted, culminates 

 in some of the species in the stalking of these veins, and this ap- 

 parently does not justify generic separation. Overemphasis of this 

 character, which recurs in several other genera, led Walsingham * 

 to assert that in any division of Gelechia the genonym must be re- 

 stricted to the group having veins 3 and 4 of the fore wings stallifu^ 

 and on that ground he associated the conmion American hosquella 



* Die Sc'bmetteilinge Euiopas, vol. 2, p. SCO, 1910. 

 "Genera insectorum, fasc. 1S4, pp. 74-84. 1925. 



•Keifer, Monthly Bull. California Dept. Agr., vol. 25, p. 240-242, 1936. 



' Genitalia of the tineld families of the Lepidoptera of the British Islands, 1935. 



* Biologia Centrali-Americana, vol. 4, p. 60, 1911. 



