ENTOMOLOGY IN NEW ZEALAND. 7 



Eeverting to my subject. When in Sydney, N.S.W., a species 

 of Nyctemera was very plentiful, and, as I received a lengthy 

 series from my friend Culpin, evidently extends through to Queens- 

 land. In New Zealand we have a species of Nyctemera which, so 

 far as I can see, dififers in no respect from the species I took in 

 Sydney, and received from Queensland, There is, of course, a 

 certain amount of variation inter se ; I therefore believe there is 

 only the one species, but should be glad to co-operate with any 

 Australian entomologist in describing the whole life-history of 

 the Australian and the New Zealand representatives. Curiously 

 Hudson gives the name N. annulata (Boisd.), with N. doubledayi 

 (Walk.), as a synonym ; Kirby gives N. annulata (Boisd.) as the 

 name of the Australian species, and mentions that a very similar 

 species, N. doubledayi, occurs in New Zealand (' Text Book,' 

 1885). This supports my belief for sinking the one name as 

 a synonym of the other. Hudson identifies the New Zealand 

 Nyctemera with the Australian, though he says, " this moth is 

 confined to New Zealand, but two closely allied species . . . are 

 found in Australia." The insect has black wings with white 

 band, sometimes broken on fore wings, and a white circular spot 

 on hind wings ; the thorax marked with yellow and brown ; male 

 and female both with pectinated antennae, male more conspicu- 

 ously so. Also a comparison of lengthy series of the New Zealand 

 species of the genus Metacrias, with certain Australian Spilosoma{?), 

 will reveal duplication of species. My study of the neuration 

 always led me to believe Arctiadae to be somewhere about the 

 lower Noctuae in phylogeny, with Bombycid affinities (structural 

 characters) ; but on what logical grounds Hudson can assign to 

 the Arctid group (Nyctemera) the position of specialized Noctuae, 

 I cannot conceive ; in placing them as the first genus in the 

 Caradrinina, he gives them the position of the most specialized 

 (recent) of that division. 



Anosia erippus and A. holina (both excellently figured by 

 Hudson) are also Queensland species. Vanessa cardui I have 

 not yet met with, but the blue-centered black spots of hiud 

 wings show kinship with the Australian V. cardui, as the Euro- 

 pean specimens are without the blue centres ; this has, I believe, 

 been pointed out by Anderson in his ' Victorian Butterflies.' I 

 soon, however, met with the common and very handsome V. 

 gonerilla, which differs from the European V. atalanta in the 

 band of the fore wings being smaller, and the band of the hind 

 wings more central and not bordering the fringe as it does in 

 V. atalanta ; the colour of these bands is also more vivid. I 

 never found the larvae of V. gonerdla, but it is interesting to 

 learn that the habits aj)proximate closely to V. atalanta. It feeds 

 on shrub and tree-nettles, concealed under a tent of leaves, and 

 pupates in the tent. I have often collected larvae of V. atalanta 

 in England, and cannot help remarking upon the habits of these 



