AMERICAN LEPIDOPTERA. 65 



On the North American PLATYPTERYGINAE. 

 BY AUG. R. GROTE, 

 Curator of Entomology, Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. 

 Through the kindness of Prof. P. C. Zeller, I have recently been 

 able to see Laspeyres' article on the genus Plafi/pten/x in the publica- 

 tion of the Gessellsehaft Nat. Freunde, Berlin, 1803, a work which 

 has now become extremely rare. The date of this work shows that 

 instead of being anterior, as I had considered it (^Froc. Acad. Nal. 

 Set., Philii., 1862), it is posterior to the description of the same genus 

 under the name of Drepana, by Franz v. P. Schrank, in the Faunu 

 Boica, Vol. 2, p. 147 — 155 of this Author, and which bears the date 

 of 1802. In this latter work the type of Schrank's geuus is the 

 European D. sieula; Schrank also includes the remaining European 

 species, adding, however, an European Noctuid, misled by a coinci- 

 dence in the shape of the primaries. Laspeyres does not fall into this 

 error, but accurately and laboriously circumscribes the genus, under 

 which he includes the entire group now regarded as a sub-family of 

 Bombycidae — the PlutyptericiJae of Stephens, for which the cor- 

 rected form Platypteryginae should be retained. The genus Platyp- 

 teryx is divided by Laspeyres into sections : " Fam. A : Alis falcatis ; 

 Fam. B: Alis subfalcatis; Fam. C : Alis rotundatis." These divi- 

 sions are demanded by the structure of the moths, and are afterward- 

 considered as distinct genera by the English Entomologists, Lead, 

 and Stephens. Laspeyres' Fam. A contains the main body of th< 

 species, this author considering the European P. fulcula typical of the 

 section. For this section Stephens retains the name Drepana, Schrank, 

 under which the genus is primarily indicated. It is to this that our 

 two North American species, described by myself {Prnc. Acad. JVaf. 

 Sci., p. 59, 1862, and p. 346, 1863), belong. For Laspeyres' Fam. 

 B, the English Author retains the generic term of Laspeyres, who re- 

 stricted this section to the single European species P. lacertinaria. 

 We have a nearly allied species in the United States, and which rt ■ 

 presents the genus with us. It is the Edapteryx hilineata of Dr. 

 Packard. This Author (^Proc. Eiit. Soc, Phil., p. 375—376, 1864 ), 

 overlooks the fact that his genus and species have a European repre- 

 sentative,* which indeed so closely resembles Dr. Packard's E. bili- 



* Equally ignorant of this fact at the time, I figured Dr. Packard's species as 

 Edapteryx bilineata {Proc. E7it. Soc. Phil. Vol. 3, Plate 6, Fig. 9.) 



TRANS. AMER. ENT. SOC. ( 9 ) JULY, 1868. 



