198 THE entomologist's record. 



and theii" motions " which tend " so to fatigue the fancy as to make 

 persons think that by having had their imagination thus overwhehiied 

 by a complication of mental images exceeding its grasp, they have 

 arrived at something of a really different nature, and capable of 

 explaining realities which the reason indeed apprehends, but of which 

 the senses can take no cognizance," or, on the other hand, the delightfully 

 clear " individuating immaterial energy," which " cannot of course be 

 pictured on the imagination," the formation of the imaginative jiicture 

 being, however, " no bar to its intellectual apprehension." 



I'he British Representatives of tlie gerius Garadrina. * 



By LOUIS B. PROUT, F.E.S. 



The genus Caradrina was constitutvsd by Ochsenheimer in 1816, 

 and was employed, with a similar though more restricted signification, 

 by Hiibner in his Verzeichniss. Treitschke, however, was the first, in 

 1825 (Die Schinett. von Europa, vol. v., part 2, p. 246), fully to 

 describe it, and consequently he is cited by Lederer and others as the 

 authority for the name. Treitschke says that " the moths have 

 notched or weakly jDcctinated antennae, a small dorsal tuft, and glossy 

 fore- wings on which, in addition to the transverse lines, a shade stripe 

 is mostly present in the neighbourhood of the reniform. The orbicular 

 is small or wanting, as is also the claviform entirely. The larvae 

 agree in form and habits ; with longitudinal lines, interrupted, oblique 

 daslies and spots or tubercles, whicli are furnished with fine hairs ; 

 rounded off towards the anus. All live on low plants, particularly 

 species of plaintain {PIanta(jo)."' 



This is not one of those genera which have undergone the remark- 

 able vicissitudes in regard to classification to which our attention has 

 recently been called by Mr. Grote and other eminent bibliogi'aphers. 

 A few of Ochsenheimer's and Treitschke's species have been removed 

 from it a^id located elsewhere ; but the whole of the six species which 

 will occupy our attention this evening were originally included in the 

 genus, and have there remained. The six British species, as I hope to 

 show in detail presently, are morpliem, Hufn. ; alsines, Hb. ; taraxaci, 

 Hb. ; ambigua, Fb. ; superstes, Tr. ; and quadripuuctata, Fb. 1 have 

 placed them in the order in which they occur in our lists, which 

 follow their customary method in separating two possible allies 

 (inorphens and quadripunctata) hy placing them at either end of the 

 genus. 



Treitschke divides the genus into four groups ; (A) with narrower 

 fore-wings and whitish hind-wings ; (B) with slender bodies, broad 

 bronze-coloured fore- wings and brown-grey hind- wings ; (C)with earth- 

 coloured, darker-mixed fore-wings and yellow-grey hind-wings ; (D) 

 with fore-wings without stigmata, only with transverse lines, or 

 unicolorous. His group (A) consisted of glareosa (now removed from 

 the genus), morpheus, cubiculuris (qundripimctata) and exigua ; (B) of 

 paluatris and two others ; (C) of superstes, ambigua, alsines, blanda 

 (^taraxaci) and two others : (L)) of trilinea (trigramrnica) and others. In 

 our present restricted generic sense, only groups (A) and (C) now concern 

 us ; group C (the laraxaci group) best re[)resents Hiibner's Caradrina. 



* A i^aper read before the City of Loud. Ent. and Nat. Hist. Soc. on Marcli 

 19tli, 1895. 



