NOTES ON THE GENUS AGDISTIS, HB. 53 



Notes on the genus Agdistis, Hb., with description of a new 

 species (Agdistis sphinx, WIsm.). 



By the Right Hon. Lord WALSINGHAM, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. 



The genus Agdistis, Hb., includes about seventeen species, for the 

 most part almost impossible to identify from published descriptions, 

 and always extremely difficult to separate, especially when represented 

 by poor specimens, or by merely a few examples. The form and 

 pattern is remarkably similar in all, and, with only two exceptions, 

 the general colouring of the forewings is practically the same. The 

 two, which may be at once recognised by their distinctly darker tint, 

 are Agdistis adactyla, Hb., and A. satanas. Mill. The Zeller Collection 

 contains thirteen specimens of adactyla, and I have others, but am 

 personally unacquainted with the larva, which feeds on Artemisia 

 campestris, and in Ann. Soc. Ent. Er., i., 250 (1832), it is said to occur 

 on Chenopodium fruticosum, Of A. satanas I have a small series of 

 twelve, sent me by the late M. Milliere, who swept larva?, some of 

 which I also possess, from mixed herbage at Cannes, ultimately 

 determining the foodplant as Scabiosa cdndicans. Eppelsheim, who 

 recorded this insect for the first time from Germany, found two larva? 

 on Scleranthus, sp., which did not agree with those of adactyla, and 

 which he thought belonged to satanas, because found on the spot 

 where he had taken it. In this connection it may be mentioned that 

 Bruand, in 1858, had described his A. delphinenselld, as being darker 

 than any figure published by Herrich-Schaffer. The figure of adactyla, 

 in Herrich-Schaffer's ScKm. Eur. (pi. vii., 47), is certainly too pale to 

 represent our present idea of that species. Rebel suggests that 

 satanas unci delphinenselld may possibly be identical, but it seems at 

 least equally probable that the latter is truly the more widely 

 distributed adactyla, Hb., and it would certainly be still unsafe to sink 

 Milliere's name in its favour. A. satanas is smaller, and usually 

 darker than adactyla, the larva? is one of those with raised thoracic 

 tubercles, and has rather strong bristles on the small tuberculated 

 dorsal spots. 



Milliere also described two species, A. staticis and A. lerinsis, as 

 feeding on " Statice cm-data " (a name not mentioned in Bonnier and 

 de Layen's Flore de la France). He assured me that staticis was to 

 be found always about a month earlier than lerinsis, although on the 

 same plants and in the same locality. He sent me larvae and living 

 specimens of both, in glass tubes, by post, but, so far as the imagines 

 were concerned, I was never able to distinguish them satisfactorily, 

 and, after carefully labelling bred specimens, I always suspected some 

 confusion among the pupae and perfect insects received from him. It 

 was of course impossible to deny that the larva; were absolutely 

 distinct ; of these, lerinsis, properly emended to lerinensis by Rebel (( 'at. 

 hep. Pal., ii., 77, no. 1422), is tuberculated as in frankeniae, Z.. while 

 staticis is smooth as in benneUi, Curt., with which it might easily be con- 

 fused. A. bennetii is one of the few lepidoptera which can so far claim 

 to be exclusively British, and it was with no small surprise that, in 1903, 

 1 fiiuiid larva', apparently (indistinguishable from those of this species, 

 on its foodplant Statin' Umonium, at Hammam-es-Salahin, in Algeria, 

 from which I bred a single specimen (88818), certainly paler than our 

 bennetii, but otherwise somewhat similar. When again at Biskra Lasl 

 M.vkch 15th, 1907. 



