﻿166 Journal New York Ent. Soc. [Voi. m. 



One point more and I am done. Without intending the least dis- 

 respect for that veteran worker, Dr. Horn, I wish to say that the distri- 

 bution of species as usually indicated by him in his writings, and for 

 which collectors are doubtless largely responsible, are almost valueless in 

 studies of this sort, and I wish to emphasize in the strongest manner 

 possible the point made by Mr. L. O. Howard, in his paper on the 

 "Geographical distribution within the United States of certain insects 

 injuring cultivated crops," where the plea was made for an exact record 

 of the occurrence of a species — for exact localities, instead of sections 

 of country or States. 



FINAL NOTE ON THE PLATYPTERYGIDiE. 



By A. Radcliffe Grote, A. M. 

 I refer to my paper on this family Can. Ent. XXVII, 133, and 

 Avish here briefly to draw attention to what seems to me the true position 

 of our single American species referred to Platypteryx, according to Neu- 

 moegen and Dyar's arrangement, although I had supposed we had 

 three: siculifer, arciiata, geniciila. It may well be these names only 

 apply to races or forms of a single species : arcuata. I take it for 

 granted that my argument as to the proper name for the family cannot 

 be gainsaid. Before any idea had been expressed in literature that 

 the genus represented a family, Hiibner had fixed the type of Platyp- 

 teryx in the Tentamen and pleuralized the name (Platypterices), using 

 it for the group afterwards in the Verzeichniss (t8i8). Stephens 

 adopted this name for the group in 1829, changing the termination to 

 follow Svvainson's rule (1827) for families, calling it Platyptericidse. 

 In 1868 I corrected the writing of the word to Platypteryginse, regard- 

 ing the group as a subfamily of Ijombycidae, following Packard. It 

 should now be called Platypterygidai, if we would respect the rules; it 

 is correctly given in the Philadelphia Check List. No change in this 

 title for the family seems permissable ; the terms " Drepanulida^ " and 

 "Drepanidse" are simply synonyms and should be abated. For the 

 type of Schrank's genus, with mixed contents, of 1S02, is not yet indi- 

 cated. The only certain generic type we have is Platypte/yx hamula 

 (Jfinaria'), and this is for Laspeyres' genus. Its designation by Hiibner 

 left at least three generic types still in Schrank's original genus, any 

 one of which might be available for Drepaiia. The family type is fixed 

 by Hiibner, and the family name must be formed from the genus of 

 this type. From a study of Speyer's excellent popular work it seems to 

 me probable that the type of Drepana may be correctly held to be none 



