95 
Vil. A Study of North American Noctuidae 
BY AUG. R. GROTE. 
[Read before this Society, July 2d, 1873.] 
In the present Paper I have continued my observations on the 
North American Noctuidae, preliminary to the publication of a 
List of the species upon which I have been for some time at work. 
The species, referred by M. Guenée to Hadena and Mamestra, I 
have now examined for the first time, with a view of testing the 
generic determinations of the celebrated French entomologist. I 
have found on a near study, that these species are not generically 
separable on the characters laid down in the Spécies Général, and why 
certain of the species are in that work referred to Mamestra instead 
of Hadena, or the reverse, I have been unable to understand. 
I haye then changed a number of M. Guenée’s generic determina- 
tions and have suppressed certain genera where I have become sat- 
isfied that the distinctions are not valid. It is difficult for the 
American student at first to study this Group without the preju- 
dices he involuntarily entertains from the works of those English 
and French authors, in which alone he finds our species described. 
It is impossible to arrive at any critical views on the subject without 
a study of certain German authorities, with whose generic concep- 
tions, but more especially with whose manner of zodlogical thought, 
we have not been sufficiently familiar. It will be of no use to 
attempt to write upon our Moths, without a study of the writings 
of Lederer, Zeller and Herrich-Schaeffer. To the latter we owe an 
appreciation of the characters offered by the venation and its cor- 
rect terminology; to the former the most conscientious and strict 
classification that has yet been offered to the student.! 


1 The student is also referred to the Annales de la Societé Entomologique Belge, for a number 
of praiseworthy observations on the Moths, as well as to Dr. Speyer’s work on the geograph- 
ical distribution of the Lepidoptera of Germany and Switzerland. The former Society had the 
honor of printing Lederer’s last communication, ‘Contributions 4 la Faune des Lépidoptéres 
de la Transcaucasie.’”” I need not say that the Wiener Entomologische Monatschrift is to the 
student of to-day what the Wiener Verzeichniss was to the student of the last century, nor that 
every word written by Lederer will make itself remembered. 
