OF NORTH AMERICA. 195 



species, vagans and rufula, which we had been unable to satisfactorily 

 identify. The experiment was tried, with the unexpected result that 

 one box produced all males conforming to Packard's genus Antardia, 

 and the other box all females much more strikingly like Phrdgmalobia, 

 but which former experience told us were only the two sexes of the 

 same species. 



After raising a long suite of these insects from the larva, I am forced 

 to the conclusion that Boisduval's vagans and rufula and Packard's 

 punctata are all the same insect in some of its different varieties, though 

 Boisduval says o{ vagans, "size of very small specimens o{ fuliginosa '' 

 Boisduval relies upon a blackish line outside the central dot, to separate 

 rufula from vagans and says of vagans ' ' always pale beneath, " but I 

 have raised from the same lot of larvae, collected on the same bush, 

 specimens in which the blackish line is present and others in which it 

 is wanting, and have before me, while writing, upwards of sixty speci- 

 mens with every conceivable intergradation. I am, however, strongly of 

 the opinion that there is yet an unseparated species, in which the hind 

 wings are «^z;er </«jy^ and which may possibly be the A. punctata q{ 

 Packard as described in the first paragraph, though the specimens al- 

 luded to as received from Mr. Edwards, and having dusky secondaries, 

 are undoubtedly .4. vagans Boisduval. In a genus so liable to variation 

 it is not safe to erect a new species on two or three specimens, especially 

 where they offer many characters common to one already described, 

 but my friend, H. Edwards, possesses several specimens from the high 

 Sierras, which I suspect are specifically distinct. They are smaller in 

 size, the secondaries are concolorous with primaries, and the markings 

 more constant ; but while the general appearance is different, it is very 

 difficult to define in intelligible words, what strikes the eye at once in 

 looking at them. 



