^^ ANO "^^^/^ 



JOURNAL OF VARIATION. 



No. 6. Vol. VI. April 1st, 1895. 



Gollecting ploctuidas by La^e Erie. 



By A. EADCLIFFE GROTE, A.M. 



Vieni, pensando a me segretemente. 



The record for tlie last of April was the thinning out of Scopelosoma ; 

 but the first of May brouglit a glad surprise. It had rained a little, 

 and the trees were darkened by the wet. On the nearest tree a tiny 

 three-cornered bit of fluffy pinkness caught my eye, and fell, fortunately 

 for me, into my collecting bottle. It was the first specimen of Gosse's 

 Arches, Hahronyne sai))t(i, that I had ever captured. I would not be 

 on record as saying anything against the prettiness of the English 

 E. derasa, but our American species lacks that hard tinting, suggestive of 

 orange peel, and does not miss it much. Our scripta is all pink and 

 Quaker gi'ay — a lovely blossom, tossed loose from the spray of spring. 

 Scripta is the dcrosa we all hope to eatch in Paradise. I can't say 

 fairer than that. To come down to earth again, scripta is our American 

 cousin, and we ought to be interested, not only because of the relation- 

 ship, but also for the inherent beauty of the moth itself. All through 

 May and some way into June .scripta came to my bait, but by no means 

 every night. Its visits were rather like those of angels, and the occa- 

 sions upon which I caught two and " saw " three, were literally few 

 and far Ijetween. It is another reason for accumulating a supply of 

 WeUschmerz, that we always "see" more than we " catch." We have 

 in America a second species of Habrofii/ne, H. chatfieldii, Grt. (= derasa, 

 Hy.-Ed.), from Alaska and the Pacific Coast, which I supposed Mr. 

 Edwards had described, after I told him in New York that it was pro- 

 bably distinct from the Eurojiean. Mr. Butler told me that there is 

 another species in Japan. Let us be thankful that there are several 

 kinds of Arches moths in the world. 



A night or two after my first scripta, came another of the Thyatiridae. 

 This was the False Coronet, Psendothyatira cymatophoroides. I am only 

 responsible for half the lengthy Latin name ; Guene'e, with his tendre for 

 oides, is my associate in the crime. Besides the typical form (or at least 

 the form described by Guenee as the male of the species), Fseudothyatira 

 has a constant variety, expidtrix, which was supposed by Guenee to be 

 the female. Both sexes are, liowever, alike represented in the two forms 



