THE ENTOMOLOGIST 



Vol. XL.] AUGUST, 1907. [No. 531. 



NOTES ON THE GENUS EUPITHECIA. 



By Louis B. Prout, F.E.S. 



L Bibliography and Synonymy. 



Notwithstanding the amount of good work that has been 

 done at this fascinating genus, both by the past generation and 

 the present, there is still room for much more, and especially 

 there is need that what has been done should be more widely 

 known. I do not pretend to have much to contribute which is 

 original, but the notes — bibhographical, synonymic, and biono- 

 mic — which I have been accumulating for years have at least put 

 me in a position to call the attention of those who will read the 

 following to various English references which have been over- 

 looked by German workers, and vice versa. 



To begin at the beginning. The generic name, Eupithecia, 

 Curt., is not to be supplanted by Tephrodystis, Hb., as has been 

 done by Meyrick and Staudinger-Rebel. Curtis published the 

 genus Eupithecia (with type linariata, Schiff., Fb.) on April 1st, 

 1826 ; Tephrodystis, Hb. (' Verzeichniss,' p. 323) is now known 

 not to have been published before August 27th of that year, 

 more probably (as Hampson, Meyrick, and Aurivillius now 

 accept, Proc. Int. Congress Zool., Cambridge, 1898, App. A., 

 pp. 300, 302) not till 1827, or at earliest 1826. I advocated this 

 retention of the name Eupithecia in the Trans. City Lond. Ent. 

 Soc. X. 68, 1901, and the late Prof. Grote did so on somewhat 

 different grounds* in the AUg. Zeit. Ent. vii. 470, in the follow- 

 ing year. 



Eucymatoge, Hb. (Verz. p. 325, type togata, Hb.), may pro- 

 visionally be used, as advocated by Meyrick and others, for tlie 

 few species with the areole double, but I have serious misgivings 

 as to its proving a really natural genus, especially as there 



■•' Grote assumes the date of both to be 1825, and the actual priority to 

 be undeterminable, and therefore follows the recommendation of the German 

 Zoological Society's Code in preferring the name which had a type specified. 



'^^NTOM. — AUGUST, 1907.S Q 



