104 c Ma y. 



with rough projecting scales beneath, terminal joint as long as second, loosely 

 scaled, acute. Posterior tibise clothed with long hairs above. Fore-wings : 2 and 

 3 remote, 7 and 8 stalked, 7 to costa, 11 from middle of cell. Hind-wings 1, tra- 

 pezoidal, apex produced, acute, ternicn bisinuatc, cilia lj ; in £ with long pencil 

 of hairs lying along costa from base beneath fore-wings ; 3 and 4 connate, 6 and 7 

 remote, nearly parallel. 



Type P. opcrculclla, Zell., Verb, zool.-bot. Ges. Wien, 1873, 2G2, 

 pi. iii, 17 ; solanella, Boisd., J. B. Soc. Centr. Hurt, 1874 (Nov.) ; 

 Meyr., Trans. N. Zeal. Inst., 1885, 1GG. 



I am indebted to Mr. A. Busck for tbe identification of Zeller's 

 operculella witb this insect ; be was good enough to get permission 

 for one of Zeller's American types to be forwarded to me for con- 

 firmation, which I was able to give without hesitation. The species 

 is now very widely distributed ; it is common in Australia and New 

 Zealand, and Boisduval described it from Algeria, but it is probable 

 that North America is its place of origin. It is everywhere very de- 

 structive to the potato, in the tubers of which it feeds, and I have no 

 doubt whatever that it will some day be found in England as an in- 

 troduced species, though climatic circumstances are perhaps not 

 favourable to its permanent establishment. 



Elmswood, Marlborough : 

 April, 1902. 



TWO NEW PAL^EAKCTIC SPECIES OF ASTATUS. 

 BY THE REV. F. D. MORICE, M.A., F.E.S. 



The following two species of Astaius appear to me sufficiently 

 distinct to be described as new, though 1 am a little unwilling to 

 increase the synonymy of this puzzling genus. 



To explain my remarks as to their antennae, I may say that in 

 A. boo])s, iSehr., and also in A. minor, Kohl, the intermediate joints of 

 the J antennae are more dilated beneath in their basal and apical 

 thirds than in their middles. In other words the dilatation is 

 emaryinate, or it might be described as double — a basal and an apical 

 dilatation, separated from each other by a central sinus. This, though 

 a minute character, is not difficult to recognise, and appears to be 

 constant in the species named above ; but I can see nothing of the 

 kind in A. stigma, Pz., nor in either of the species now to be described. 



1. ASTATUS PELOPS, 11. S}). 



<J. Niger, abdominis basi rufa, antice albopilosus. A. boopi, Schr., similis, sed 

 tegulis tuberculisquc humeralibus albis, tibiis anticis antice obscure rufescentibus. 



