AmerigAna 



VOL. YI. BROOKLYN, SEPTEMBER, 1890. 



No. 9. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN EUSTROTIINI. 



BY A. RADCLIFFE GROTE, A. M. 



The rather small sized, slender Nociuidce, Boisduval's Noduo- 

 phalanida;, which I have included in the Revised Check List under 

 the tribe Existrotiini, seem well placed low down in the Nochdnce, 

 since in several particulars and in their geometriform larvae, which 

 are 12- to 14-footed, they approach the Cafocalince. The eyes are 

 naked, and this feature is characteristic of the lower Nodidda: and 

 the Geomctridce, in which latter a single genus has hairy eyes so far 

 as I am aware. The slender body is rather sparsely clothed with a 

 mixed \estiture, sometimes mealy. The wings are rather weak, the 

 primaries with the external margin comparatively straight and some- 

 times noticeably short, the hind wings full and rounded. Several 

 genera have a marked tortriciform appearance, these are Erofyla (= 

 Agrophild), of Europe, and Fniva, Xanthoptcra, Spragiieia, of our 

 fauna. In the Revised Check List I have commenced the series 

 with the genera having a clypeal protuberance, or an embossed 

 front. In the first genus, Azenia, the armature of the head is dis- 

 proportionately large. There is a tendency in the tortriciform genera 

 which follow, to have the clypeus rugose or globose, the infra-clypeal 

 plate prominent, so that there seems a reason for -the arrangement 

 there adopted; these frontal characters seem to gradually vanish in 

 the other genera of the tribe, though the .front is often .swollen. All 

 of the genera I have seen have the legs somewhat weak, and, so far 

 as I am aware, the tibiae unarmed. 



The neuration affords certain plastic characteristics by which 

 we may separate the genera. On the hind wings vein 5 is variably 



Entomologica Americana. Vol. VI. 9 September, 1890. 



