Mr. A. G. Butler on the Ophideres princeps of Guenée. 375 
larva of Acronycta hastulifera, A. & S., many of the barbed 
airs forming the black pencils are flattened at the end and 
black, but not striated. 
These specialized and highly differentiated dark scale-like 
sete appear to be of use in rendering the dorsal tufts more 
conspicuous, the caterpillars being very hairy, and thus 
probably inedible by birds. It should be observed that the 
larva of Gastropacha americana, in which the dorsal tubercles 
and the scales are much smaller than in the European G. 
quercifolia, is rendered at least equally conspicuous by the 
two transverse bright scarlet bands disclosed behind the second 
and third thoracic segments when the insect is creeping. 
These appear to be entirely wanting in the European species. 
Finally, the occurrence of these scales, so much like those 
of adult Lepidoptera, is an interesting example of the accelera- 
tion of development of the seta in the larval stage, and it is . 
not improbable that in the ancestors of certain of the Lasio- 
campide they were characters acquired during the later stages 
of their larval lifetime. : 
Providence, R. I., U.S. A. 
LV. —On the Ophideres princeps of Guenée and its utter 
dissimilarity in Structure and Pattern from the Ophideres 
princeps of Boisduval. By Arruur G. Butter, F.L.8., 
BLS, CC. 
In the ‘ Voyage of the ‘ Astrolabe’’ (Lépidopteres, p. 245) 
M. Boisduval described a moth from Dorey, New Guinea, 
under the name of Ophideres princeps; he characterized it 
as allied to O.. materna, Cramer, and as having “the front 
wings blackish, slightly clouded, dusted with black and a 
little varied with greenish, with four white spots, grouped in 
pairs; the lower wings yellow with a kidney-shaped patch 
and a black border, and the fringe intersected with whitish.” 
This is probably one of the innumerable varieties of the wide- 
ranging O. fullonica. 
In the third volume of his ‘ Noctuélites’ M. Guenée 
describes and figures a West-African species (with M. Bois- 
duval’s locality) as O. princeps—evidently without taking 
the trouble to look up the description in the ‘ Voyage of the 
‘ Astrolabe,’ ’ with which the African species hardly corre- 
sponds in a single particular, inasmuch as the uals wings, 
28* 
