494 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. u4 



the material treated, was almost exclusively Central American. How- 

 ever, all the decisions regarding the Acrolophidae previously reached 

 by this group of workers were set down in their statements prefatory 

 to the volmne. The failure of the old generic characters was dis- 

 cussed at considerable length, and twenty different genera formerly 

 applied to the group were combined into the one large genus Acrolophus. 

 The latter along with two salvaged monotypical genera, neither of 

 North American origin, presumably constituted the family, Acrolo- 

 phidae. These two genera, Apoclisis and Urbara, are perhaps now 

 also synonyms of Acrolophus, leaving the Acrolophidae a mono- 

 generic family. Although Walsingham and his co-workers gave this 

 group family status without justifying that ranking beyond referring 

 to it as "this very distinctly recognisable family," it has since been 

 generally considered as a family, especially by North American 

 workers. 



Haimbach (1915) described a single North American species, since 

 found to be a synonym, under Clemens' old genus, Anaphora. In 

 1917, Barnes and McDunnough in their listing of North American 

 Lepidoptera placed all the known species of the group in the genus 

 xAcroloyhus , under the family Acrolophidae. Meyrick (1919) de- 

 scribed as new foiu* North American species, placing them under 

 Acrolophus. This author continued to recognize the group only as a 

 large genus of the Tineidae. During the many years subsequent to 

 Meyrick's descriptions of 1919 no new North American acrolophids 

 have been described. 



Forbes (1923), one of the first workers to diagnose the group with 

 a fairly detailed and accurate discussion of not only adult but also 

 larval and pupal characters, gave it subfamily ranldng as the Acrolo- 

 phinae on an equal status with the Tineinae, in the family Tineidae. 

 However, he stated: "The two subfamihes are not closely related, 

 and could well be treated as families, as they often are." He did not 

 consider the group to be monogeneric for, without elaboration, he 

 said: "Besides Acrolophus there are a couple of other well-defined 

 genera." Forbes' general diagnosis, which did not include genital 

 characters, is now somewhat in need of revision. 



Eyer (1924), who made a study of the comparative morphology of 

 the male genitalia of primitive Lepidoptera, accorded the group 

 family status as the Acrolophidae, and he apparently became the 

 first worker to diagnose and place the group on the basis of the male 

 genitalia. Although previous workers, notably Walsingham in 1887, 

 had used these organs for the separation of species, and had described 

 and illustrated them, Eyer was the first to use them collectively 

 for comparison with allied groups. From an examination of 9 North 

 American, 1 Panamanian, and 1 Peruvian species of Acrolophidae, he 



