NOTES ON THE GENUS GONATOPUS (dRYININ.e). 79 



microdactyla, only very much larger. I have taken one or two imagines 

 each year. I now have eight specimens altogether. I think that it 

 must feed on some low plant. I have not yet been able to trace it. 

 There are golden-rod, thyme, marjoram, and Hieracium pilosella, 

 growing on the ground, whilst some distance away from the locality is 

 Eupatorium, but I feel certain that this is not the foodplant, and it is 

 very seldom that microdactyla moves away from its foodplant. The 

 ova were large, and of a very pale-green colour. 



[In 1834, Stephens made an attempt to apply Hubner's classifica- 

 tion to the British " plumes" (lllus. Brit. Ent. Haust,, iv., pp. 370 et 

 sap). Among other of Hubner's species which he thought he 

 recognised in Britain was carphodactyla, which, however, he misspelled 

 " carpodactyla," but corrected to carphodactyla (op. cit., p. 424). At 

 the time, osteodactylus, as such, was not known as a British species, nor 

 was it, indeed, separated from carphodactyla until 1841, when Zeller 

 distinguished it from its allies, and named it. It was then assumed 

 that the carphodactyla of Stephens was Zeller's species, and the latter 

 name disappeared from our British list, osteodactylus taking its place. 

 There has been no suspicion that this was not entirely the case, until 

 some few months ago, when Mr. Purdey kindly offered to get ova of 

 H. osteodactylus, a well-known Folkestone species, for description in the 

 account of the "plumes," now in course of publication in the Natural 

 History of British Lepidoptera. The eggs were obtained and duly 

 described, but the resulting larvae refused to feed on golden-rod. Even 

 then suspicion was not aroused until this summer, when the imagines 

 struck Mr. Purdey as being something different, and his belief that 

 they were not osteodactylus, approached certainty, and a descriptive 

 note from Purdey to Mr. Sich, led the latter to write to us 

 suggesting the species as being possible carphodactyla. In due course 

 the imagines were submitted to Dr. Chapman, and proved to be this 

 species. It is very like osteodactylus, but more marked with black, like 

 microdactyla, the larva feeding on Conyza squarrosa. Our British series of 

 osteodactylus want carefully looking over, and, as the new British 

 species is a rather common one, and we believe pretty regularly, bred on 

 the continent, there should be little trouble in finding the larva. — Ed.] 



Notes on the genus Gonatopus (Dryininae). 



By A. J. CHITTY, M.A.., F.E.S. 



The admirable article of Dr. Kieffer on the British Gonatopi, 

 translated by Mr. Donisthorpe in the January number of the h'.nt. 

 Becord, is of the greatest interest, and will, I am sure, induce others 

 to study these remarkable little insects. Curiously, the Annals of 

 Scottish Natural History, for January, has also a list of the Scottish 

 Bethylidae and Dryininae, but no records of Gonatopus, two of which I 

 can now add to the Scottish list. 



For some time past I have had in my possession five or six distinct 

 species of Gonatopus, from various parts of the country, waiting to be 

 named; nearly all have, at some time or other, been identified, for 

 past owners, as pedestris, Dalm., though abundantly distinct from one 

 another. Thanks to Dr. Kieffer these can now be named, and 1 am a! 

 the same time (thanks to the kindness of Professor Poulton) able to 

 restore two more species of Gonatopus to the British list, viz., oratorius, 



