286 THE entomologist's record. 



may be summed up as follows. In fixing a structural type, 

 systematists will do well to ascertain the correct application of the 

 names of genera already extant, before giving their type a generic name 

 in print. It is quite clear that each generic name must have as a type 

 some one particular species, the structure of which becomes the model 

 for the genus, and the criterion by which we are to decide when the 

 generic limits are exceeded. In this way confusion will be avoided. 

 Secondly, it is manifestly impossible to correctly study and arrange the 

 North American Noctuids without reference to the European species 

 and the European literature. The attempt to do this is the 

 fundamental error of Mr. Smith's Catalogue and work. As an attempt 

 at classification, the catalogue offers little that is new ; there is no such 

 thing as a " suj^er-family Noctuidae "* announced in the title. The 

 difficulty of obtaining what Mr. Smith calls "the ancients" (apparently 

 under the impression that the authors were contemporary with 

 Julius Cfesar, while Linne has not been dead one hundred and 

 twenty years yet), has occasionally prevented us in America from 

 getting at the bottom facts of European literature, and it would seem 

 as though the literary basis of names in use in Europe is not always 

 assured. There is also the other difficulty, that there are no large 

 collections of European Noctuids in American Museums. During twenty 

 odd years, while I was continually working on the American Owlet 

 moths, it was very difficult for me to obtain the necessary European 

 material. Mr. Smith's last Catalogiie gives us the results of my and of 

 his comparison of the types of our American species, so that the oldest 

 names of the latter, though not without notable exceptions, are 

 tolerably well ascertained. But it does not go farther than this, and 

 beyond reinstating a fresh number of objectionable names of Mr. 

 Walker's, based on comparison of " types," it has not altered the 

 general aspect of affairs materially. There is plenty of opportunity for 

 observation and study on both sides of the Atlantic before our 

 nomenclature will become settled, while a mutual exchange of results 

 in the field and a willingness to learn from each other, will hasten the 

 advent of a better understanding on all hands of the faunaj of the 

 two hemisjiheres, faunse which are so intimately related. 



fCIENTIFIC NOTES & OBSERVATIONS. 



Notes on Vui'je. — Castuia. — I am indebted to Professor Poulton 

 for the ojjportuuity of examining a pupa of Castnia. The specimen is 

 of one of the larger species, and is a female ; it was j^reserved at the 

 moment of emergence, so that a certain amount of the opening of seg- 

 ments and separation of parts that occur in dehiscence has taken place. 

 The pupa resembles that of Cossus, not only superficially, but in great 

 detail, so that it clearly belongs to the great group of families of which 



* Mr. Smith's classification in the Catalogue, 1893, is copied from mine in the 

 Proc. of the American Philosopliical Society, June, 1883, p. 138, wliere I establisli 

 the three families, Tliyatiridae, Noctuidae, Brephidae, using the first term I believe 

 originally. No reference to this source is made by Mr. Smith. From Mr. 

 Walker's method of working, no specimens shown as his "types" in Brit. Mus. 

 can be considered, ipso facto, authentic. Yet this is what Mr. Smith virtually 

 assumes. Mr. Smith's work is less a laborious testing of the true synonymy than 

 a surface comparison of labels attached to specimens in different collections. It 

 thus creates fresh difficulties. 



