35 



NOTES ON WALKER'S TYPES OF GEOMETRI- 

 DAE IN THE D'URBAN COLLECTION 



Through the kindness of the Rev. Dr. Bethune we have recently 

 had the opportunity of examining the D'Urban Collection of N. Amer- 

 ican Lepidoptera, now the property of the Entomological Society of 

 Ontario and contained in their collection at the Ontario Agricultural 

 College, Guelph. This collection contains a number of specimens 

 which served as types to Francis Walker of the British Museum, the 

 descriptions of the species occuring both in Walker's Catalogue of the 

 Lepidoptera of the British Museum and also in a paper by Mr. D'Urban 

 in the Canadian Naturalist and Geologist Vols. V and VI on the Lepid- 

 optera of the Rouge River. Our attention was largely confined to the 

 Geometridae and as the results obtained from an examination of these 

 types vary considerably from the idea of the species as given in 

 Dyar's Catalogue, we offer the following notes with a view to clear- 

 ing up the synonymy of the species involved. 



We might preface our remarks by stating that none of the speci- 

 mens actually are marked with the word 'type', except in some few 

 instances where Dr. Bethune has recently labelled them as such; the 

 specimens however, bear Walker's written label containing the name 

 of the species and very often the letter 'n', presumably an abbrevia- 

 tion for 'nova' ; in some few instances there has evidently been an 

 unfortunate shifting of labels, due doubtless to the many hands the 

 collection has passed through since its original determination by 

 Walker and it has been necessary to check up each presumable 'type' 

 with the original description before definitely pronouncing it to be the 

 true type. 



As far as our present knowledge goes there are twenty-five pre- 

 sumable species of Geometridcu described by Walker, the types of which 

 are stated to be contained in the D'Urban Collection ; in the fol- 

 lowing notes we treat the species in their order of publication, irrespec- 

 tive of their present position in our lists. 



Ellopia aequaliaria Wlk. (1860, C. B. M. XX, 164). 



This species has been listed as a synonym of fiscellaria Gn., but 

 the specimen so labelled, which agrees excellently with the description, 

 does not at all agree with Oberthur's figure of Guenee's type (Et. de 



