1901 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



The above is subaiilted to our members to remind them that there is still good work to be 

 done even with this showy and not uncommon species. Should the insect appear again next 

 year in any abundance, efforts should be made to carry out Dr. Scudder's suggestion with a 

 view to solving the points raised. Exact dates of the first appearance of the butterflies and 

 notes as to the times of greatest abundance should be carefully kept, and, if these lacts are 

 recorded by several observers at different points, they would certainly furnish much valuable 

 information towards solving this problem. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN FALL WEBWORMS. 

 By Henry H. Lyman, M.A., Montreal. 



The name Fall Webworm, as is well known, was given by Harris to the caterpillar of the 

 moth which he described under the name Arctia Textor, but for which he subse([uently erected 

 the genus Hyphantria, putting also in it the Many-Spotted Ermine Moth of the South, originally 

 ilescribed under the name Bombyx Cutoea by Drury. As I have already given in the " Canadian 

 Entomologist " * a somewhat extended historical sketch of these moths, it is not necessary to 

 repeat it here. 



The earliest published opinion that Cunea Drury and Textor Harris were not specifically 

 distinct, which I have been able to tind, was that contained in the short paper by Mr. Graef in 

 Bull. Brooklyn Ent. Soc, III. 14, 1880, he having taken all intergrades between immaculate 

 tnd heavily spotted, and having seen the two forms in copulation, as had also Mr. Otto Meske 

 if Albany. In the August number of the same journal, Mr. G. H. French recorded having bred 

 both forms from a nest of caterpillars which had apparently just hatched from a single cluster 

 of eggs deposited by a single moth. In the same year, Riley in the General Index to his 

 Missouri Reports also placed Textor as a synonym of Cunea, but in Grote's Check List of 1882, 

 Textor and Punctata stand, apparently, as good species, though without numbers, Piinctatissima 

 A. & S. being the only name given as a synonym of Cunea Drury. 



In 1887 Riley issued Bulletin No. 10, U.S. Division of Entomology, on " Shade Trees and 

 their Insect Defoliators," in which, writing of the Fall Webworm, he said, "The moths vary 

 greatly, both in size and coloration. Tliey have, in conse(i(uence of such variation, received 

 many names, such as cunea Drury, textor Harr. pn^ictata Fitch, pnnctatissima Smith. But 

 there is no doubt, as proven from frequent breeding of specimens, that all these names apply to 

 the very same insect, or at most to slight varieties, and that Drury's name cunea, having priority, 

 must be used for the species." 



Since that date, it seems to have been generally accepted that we had only one species 

 varying greatly, and even Congrua Walker was su^^posed on Mr. Butler's authority to be merely 

 a variety of Cunea. Having no evidence to urge against this conclusion, and having no 

 acquaintance with the Many-Spot ttd Ermine Moth in life, and only a pair in my collection, I, 

 as so many others continually do, accepted perfunctorily the dictum of these authorities, though 

 living in the Textor I'egion where Cunea does not occur, I could never really bring myself to 

 believe that the two forms belonged to one species, and thus the controversy which started in 

 the May 1899 number of the "Canadian Entomologist" over the question as to what species 

 was the true Cunea of Drury (juickened my interest in the Fall Webworm moths, and I determined 

 to solve the problem if possible. I therefore appealed to Dr. Harrison G. Dyar to secure for me 

 eggs of Cunea, and this he kindly did, instructing his assistant to get them for me. 



On 3rd August I received from Washington a bitch of eggs mailed on 31st July, accompanied 

 by the moth which laid them, and which was still alive and still ovipositing. 



* Vol. XXXir. 122. 



