32 



day was spent in looking this over and comparing my own speci- 

 mens with M. Guenee's types. Unfortunately, the collection 

 which I had brought with me was comparatively small, and M. 

 Guenee no longer possessed types of a great number of moths, 

 American species, which he had described. I, however, verified 

 or corrected a number of my previous determinations of his spe- 

 cies, and was able to make several new ones, which I have since 

 disseminated among entomologists in this country. 



With the evening we parted, promising each other a future 

 meeting, which was destined never to take place. This was in 

 1867. Our correspondence since that time had been slight, but 

 only recently M. Guenee had sent me an outline drawing of some 

 of his species of Noctuidae, which enabled me to recognize his 

 Mamestra Passer and his Celaena Excsa. 



So far as American Lepidopterists are concerned, their interest 

 in M. Guenee begins and ends with his six volumes in the series 

 of the " Species Generales." There is no necessity at this time to 

 enter into any detailed criticism of this work. Its publication 

 and the friendship of Doubleday gave to its author a popularity 

 in England, which he can hardly be said to have outlived. In 

 Germany, M. Guenee's classification of the moths met with de- 

 cided and growing opposition among the best entomologists. For 

 myself, being a student of his work, especially the volumes on 

 the Noctuidae, I believe him to have been an excellent describer 

 of species, but a deficient observer of generic characters. The 

 material out of which M. Guenee composed his genera Agrotis, 

 Noctua, Hadena, Mainestra and Aplccta, is badly selected, and 

 species are consorted without regard to natural characters which 

 had been already discovered by Stephens and earlier writers. On 

 the other hand, the effort of M. Guenee to gather structural feat- 

 ures from «//the stages of the insect, merits favorable notice. The 

 North American species of Noctuida; which he has described, I 

 have been able largely to make out from his published descrip- 

 tions. A few species oi Acronycta, Lcncania, Hadena, etc. remain 

 unknown to me. Among single forms which should be suf^c- 

 iently striking are Lepidomys Irrenosa, Mythhnna Culea, and Cleo- 

 ceris Ojiychina, that I have not been able to recognize as yet in 

 any of our collections. M. Guenee also drew up descriptions of 

 several species from drawings by Abbot, and none of these have 

 been satisfactorily identified and probably cannot be. 



Notwithstanding the criticism of Clemens, published in the 

 Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 

 for i860, and which, while it may be considered in the main cor- 

 rect, is particular and unnecessarily personal, M. Guenee's work 

 retains a literary and scientific value, which atones for its now ap- 

 parent defects. It is, however, somewhat curious to find Dr. 

 Clemens taking Guenee to task for overlooking the ocelli in Dory- 



