MMUNcini-. — nF.n.r.riin.A. 



1-2:1 



Genus XXVL— Deilkpiiila, (hhscnhcnncr. 



Antrnnw short, gradually but distinctly clubbed, especially it. the males, the 

 club attenuated at the apex and uncinated, with a nuked subulated appendage 



Sp. pcecila. Steph. Catal. 



Smaller than the foregoing: anterior wings rather acute, hoary, cloiuled wid. 

 brown, with several longitudinal and oblique black lines, and a zigzag one of 

 the same colour at the apex, a conspicuous white spot on the cUsc, near the 

 costa, and towards the hinder margin an undulated hoary streak, margmed 

 externally with brown; the cilia white, spotted with brown: posterior wmgs 

 brown, with a broad pale central band; the cilia pure immaculate white: 

 head and sides of the thorax hoary; disc of the latter brown, changmg to 

 hoary posteriorly: abdomen hoary ash, with an obsolete brownish hue down 

 the back, and a row of undefined black spots down each side. 

 Of this apparently nondescript species, a single example, in fine condition, is in 

 Mr. Vigors's cabinet as an indigenous insect; but its authenticity is question- 

 able, from the circumstance of three species alone of true Sphinx, Sp. Con- 

 volvuli, Ligustri, et Pinastri, having been hitherto detected in Europe and 

 from the following information furnished to me by Mr. Vigors: " lins 

 insect and another (Sp. plebeia) were placed in Mr. Wilkin's cabinet as Sp. 

 Pinastri, accompanied by a memorandum that one of the two was foreign, 

 the other British." Now, as neither of Mr. Vigors's specimens occur in other 

 parts of Europe, and as Sp. Pinastri is not in his collection (although inc uded 

 in the printed hst of the rarer British species contained in that of Mr. A\ ilkm), 

 it is not only manifestly impossible from the tenor of the memorandum to 

 ascertain which of the above was actually found in England, but it is obvious 

 that both were confounded with Sp. Pinastri, thus affording another practical 

 and forcible example of the injury to science which has arisen from the 

 very execrable practice of placing foreign specimens in British cabinets: a 

 practice which, I lament to add, is stiU foUou-ed by some collectors of the 

 present day, and which, I repeat, is fraught with the moet perplexing and 

 Lischievous consequences, being no less detrin.ental to the pro.^ess of know- 

 "ige than subversive of those very principles such collectors protess to tol low ; 

 L'if their collections be declared to consist of the pro uctions ot a loca 

 iTstrict they are evidently not so when they are composed of the produce of 

 ^^^, and which is undeniably the case when foreign specimens are 

 pt d tLrein, in lieu of such asare otherwise unattainable from the™ y 

 I the given spot. And the simple facts of the apparent nuUgenous content, 

 of this'genus having been so improperiy extended, by the >--'"-- ^^^^^^^^ 

 specimens, and the species themselves so glaringly confounded, although 

 cdmUed of the largest and most conspicuous Lcpidoptera, imperunisly 

 demand the abandonment of the vicious practice i. toto. But as it is essential 

 to obtain such foreign specimen, for the sake of illustration, let them uo, b. 



