226 FALMER WORM— ITS SCIENTIFIC NAME. 



topic which was of surpassing interest to them at that time, a 

 copy of this communication was inserted in the Salem Press 

 newspaper of July 12th, copies of which were distributed to all 

 my correspondents. Upon the 8th of Juy I obtained the insect 

 in its perfect state, and met with specimens in abundance, in 

 orchards and forests upon the following day. A postscript 

 to my previous communication was accordingly prepared, giving 

 a description of the moth, when I was not a little surprised to 

 receive from Dr. Harris a slip from the Cambridge Chronicle of 

 July 19th, containing a short description of this same insect, 

 under the name of Rhinosia pometella. Although this name, 

 thus published in a local newspaper, had no scientific validity, 

 I cheerfully adopted it. My communication of June 30th, and 

 a postscript thereto dated July 23d, was published in the Jour- 

 nal of the New-York State Agricultural Society, September 1853, 

 (vol. iv, p. 36), and was re-published with Dr. Harris's article 

 from the Cambridge newspaper appended, in the Society's Tran- 

 sactions for that year, (vol. xiii, pp. 178 — 192). These are the 

 principal papers upon this insect, so far as I am aware, which 

 have hitherto appeared. 



Although from its habit of drawing leaves together in a clus- 

 ter, secreting itself between and feeding upon them, letting 

 itself down by a thread, &c, the palmer worm corresponds with 

 the Family Tortricidce of the Order Lepidoptera, there is a section 

 of moths of Family Tineidje which possess these same habits, 

 and it is to this latter family which this insect pertains. The 

 genus to which it belongs is characterised principally by having 

 the scales with which the feelers or palpi are clothed very long, 

 jutting forward of the head horizontally like a camel's hair pen- 

 cil, or a beak, with the last joint slender and projecting upwards 

 from the middle of this beak like a little horn or spur, as repre- 

 sented in the profile view of the head, plate 4, fig. 4 a. The name 

 Chatochilus given to this genus by Mr. Stephens, is retained by 

 Westwood and Humphrey in their recent work on British moths. 

 The name Rhinosia bestowed almost simultaneously upon this 

 genus by the German naturalist Treitschke and adopted by Dr. 

 Harris, is too nearly identical with the name Rhi?wtia, gkfPp. 

 many years anteriorly by Mr. Kirby to a genus of weevils^) 



