112 THE entomologist's RECORD. 



larvae as the moths of his distigma, and not from the presumed larvae 

 of his bicolor. It was a case of defective breeding-cage experiment. 

 Had it been true, we should have been brought face to face with the 

 astounding fact that larvee, structurally very dissimilar, produced 

 moths generically and specifically identical. Other cases where the 

 larvEe form races, only distinguishable by what we are accustomed to 

 consider specific differences between caterpillars, not generic, are 

 recorded in the genera Orygia and Cltsiocampa. In the latter genus 

 the type form, C. californica, Pack., has three larval forms, tabled by 

 Mr. Dyar as follows : — 



1. A dorsal pale line, sometimes obsolete : 



Lateral region heavily blue shaded . . , ambisimilis. 

 Lateral region with no blue shade . . . californica. 



2. A dorsal row of elliptical blue spots . . . pluvialis. 



The species inhabits the coast region of California and the Pacific North- 

 west. In all these cases the names can only be applied with certainty 

 to the larva and bred moths. To consider them distinct species, as 

 species are now understood, is clearly an impossibility. Perhaps the 

 whole subject needs verification and breeding experiment. Do the 

 moths interbreed (they are not in most cases geographically separated, 

 but occur together) ? What effect on larval marking is effected by the 

 crossing of the moths produced by the distinct larval types ? Are these 

 larval types strictly correlated with the food plant ? Undoubtedly 

 the Bombycine type of Lepidoptera would seem to be the most pliable. 

 These Bombycine cells are a matrix which is not yet exhausted in the 

 production of species. A little farther advanced in the fixity of 

 sjiecific characters come those gi-oups of slightly differentiated species 

 which I have called progenera. These are, for instance, the Noto- 

 dontid Datana, where a series of forms, all readily distinguished as 

 larval, are already to be certainly (but not readily) diagnostically 

 determined as images. Again, a little farther, and we have the struc- 

 turally identical species of the Saturnian genus Plati/samia, falling 

 into two series according to geographical distribution, the three species 

 found East of the Eocky Mountains in a progeneric state, closely 

 allied in marking, colour, and even the peculiar smell of the imago, 

 the one on the Californian slope already quite independent and peculiar 

 in all specific characters. Isolation has hardened the specific marks ; the 

 branching off of the three Eastern forms over a wider extent of 

 territory is nearer our own day in time ; originally there were only 

 two species, the Californian and one Eastern ; still farther back the 

 common ancestor diverged. — A. E. Grote, A.M., Bremen. 



guRRENT NOTES. ' 



It may be interesting to hymenopterists to know that the season 

 of 1894 was, in North Germany, unfavourable in comparison with 

 former seasons. During the Easter holidays Mr. Diedrim Alfken visited 

 the Badener Berge, the well known Hanoverian Hills, sloping to the 

 Eiver Weser, a favourite collecting ground for apidologists. The hills 

 are clayey and, while at their base, along the river, extensive growths 

 of sallows are found, the higher portions afford numerous kinds of 

 flowering plants attractive to bees. The results show only about half 

 as many species as were collected under the same circumstances in 1893. 

 On March 25th, on willows, occurred : Bomhus pratorum, L., scrimshiranus, 



