120 THE ENTOMOLOGIST S RECOtll). 



occupied lor fer rug aria, Haw., it must now stand for the type of the 

 species, and the commoner forms will be the varieties. 



Forms with the band more entire, and frequently of brighter colour, 

 such as we get so commonly in the South of England, agree rather with 

 ferrugaria, Haw. ; his diagnosis is : " alls cinereis fascia parva basi, 

 aliaque lata repanda medio rufescentibus ; punctoque postico didymo 

 fusco." It will be noticed that he does not mention anj' conspicuous 

 ochreous shade in the ground colour, and this agrees fairl}^ well with 

 some of our southern forms, but it has resulted in leading Continental 

 entomologists, e.g., Guene'e and Staudinger, to connect his ferrugaria 

 with theirs. This is certainly an error ; Haworth's type, which I have 

 seen, is an ordinary English form of the species we are now considering, 

 the spadicearia of Germany. 



Confixaria, H.-S. (334), appears to be, as Bohatsch reports (Wien. 

 Ent. Zeit., iv., p. 177), an aberration of this species "in which the 

 many wavy lines have vanished, so that of the pattern of the fore wings 

 the red-brown central area alone remains ; the outer dentated line, 

 with the two blackish spots in the upper third, is also indicated, etc." 

 The band is also reduced in width, and the variation is in some degree 

 parallel to unidentaria var. coarctata. 



Many interesting casual varieties of this species have come under my 

 notice, on which I would fain have commented had time permitted ; but 

 I must content myself with summing u}) its general topomorphic vari- 

 ation in the British Isles. The dark-banded, non-striated forms, and 

 those with but little ochreous in the ground colour and on the border 

 of the hind wings, (in brief, those which bear so great superficial 

 resemblance to " red unidentaria "), seem to be confined to the South of 

 England. The Yorkshire moorland form, of which Mr. Porritt very 

 kindly sent his bred series for my inspection, differs from our ordinary 

 southern forms in 



1. — The uniform brightness of the ochreous colouring. 

 2. — A general tendency to an increase of its quantity, e.g., in the 

 marginal area, and on the under surface. 



3. — The well-marked hind wings, with more or less ochreous-tinted 

 outer band. 



4. — A general difference in the tone of the colouring ; the central 

 band never very dark nor distinctly purplish, but rather inclining to 

 ferruginous. 



Scotch forms are similar in their general characters to the York- 

 shire forms, though with an increasing tendency towards the genuine 

 ^'spadicearia " type — band paler than in southern examples, sometimes 

 almost unicolorous with the ground colour, and often more or less " in 

 strigis dissoluta." Also, as Mr. Keid, of Pitcaple, writes me : — "The 

 band is a little narrower, and, if I may use the term, the whole insect 

 has a looser appearance. I mean the scales are not so firmly attaclied 

 as in the southern forms, hence it has not such a sleek aj^pearance," &c. 

 The Eannoch form is known among some collectors as var. salicaria, 

 Haw., and probably his type of that supposed " species " may have 

 been an extreme striated form hereof ; I have failed in my endeavours 

 to trace either Haworth's type specimen or the one from Bentley's 

 collection figured by Wood (555), which seems to be a very obscure, 

 nearly unicolorous form. 



The Irish forms of this species are very interesting ; I am indebted 



