BOARMID.E—DAS YDIA. 157 



working- up the Lepidopterous Fauna of Ireland ; and there 

 IS little reason to hope that it is now in existence. More- 

 over, Professor Westwood's original sketch has disappeared, 

 and nothing remains as an aid to identification but the figure 

 in a supplementary plate to the second edition of Wood's 

 Index Entomologicus. This figure represents an insect with 

 blunt, rather rounded wings, slate-grey, without markings, 

 except that the nervures and margins are black-brown; 

 indeed, without taking into account that it is a reduced 

 figure, one would be inclined to guess that it represented 

 one of the black varieties of Fidonia atomaria, except that 

 the antennae are weak and threadlike. 



Now the genuine D. torvaria = tencbraria is a very diiferent 

 insect— more robust, shaped very much as D. ohfuscaria, of 

 about the same size, and with strongly pectinated antennae 

 m the male ; its ground colour varies from rich umbreous to 

 brown-black ; its first and second transverse lines are black, 

 much indented, and often enclose a band darker than the 

 ground colour. To this species the figure in question bears 

 no resemblance whatever. To Clcor/cne FrJetirraria the figure 

 does bear some resemblance in colour, the darker nervures, 

 and absence of other markings, but none whatever in its 

 general shape. Indeed, comparison with both species- 

 Continental examples of which now, fortunately, exist in the 

 National Collection, and agree with published figures — induces 

 a belief that Mr. Templeton's specimen was only named by 

 guess in either case, or from very inadequate descriptions, 

 and that it has nothing to do with either species. What the 

 Ballymena insect may have been will, perhaps, always remain 

 a problem ; one can only suggest that it was a black variety 

 of some common and well-known species. Certain ly i)as7/^/a 

 torvaria = tenehraria has no claim to a place in the British 

 Fauna — nor has Ckogene Pelctieraria.'] 



[Mniophila cineraria, /////;.— This insect seems first to 

 have been included in the British Fauna by Mr. Doubleday, 



