Sphingida 



Genus LAPARA Walker. 



Head small. Palpi short and slender. Tongue very short, 

 almost obsolete. Eyes small. Antennae slender. Thorax 

 stout and short. Abdomen long and cylindrical, tapering. Legs 

 weak. Fore and mid tibia spinulose. The larva is without an 

 anal horn, cylindrical, tapering slightly from the middle forward 

 and backward, pale green, striped with white, and checkered 

 with darker green. The caterpillars feed upon various species of 

 pine, and are not at all sphingiform in appearance. There are 

 reputed to be four species of the genus found in our fauna, two 

 of which we figure. L. halicarnice Strecker, of which only one 

 specimen is known, which I have recently examined, appears to 

 be a somewhat hypertrophied and, in consequence, aborted 

 female of L. coniferarum Abbot & Smith. It is very doubtfully 

 a valid species. 



(1) L. coniferarum Abbot & Smith, Plate III, Fig. 16, $. 

 ^Abbot's Pine Sphinx.) 



Syn. cana Martyn. 



This species is somewhat variable, especially in the size of 

 the females and in the amount of marking upon the fore wings. 

 It is a common insect in the foot-hills of the Alleghenies about 

 the headwaters of the Potomac River. I found the larvae in great 

 abundance upon pines at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, in the 

 summer of 1884. It ranges from Canada to Florida and west- 

 ward into the basin of the Mississippi, but has never been 

 reported from any point west of that river, south of Minnesota, 

 so far as is known to the writer. 



(2) L. bombycoides Walker, Plate III, Fig. 7, $ . (The 

 Bombyx Sphinx.) 



Syn. harrisi Clemens. 



This little hawkmoth, which may easily be recognized from 

 the figure we give, has the same geographical distribution as the 

 preceding species, and feeds upon the same forms of vegetation 

 in the larval stage. 



Lapara pineum Lintner (Lintner's Pine Sphinx) is a 

 species of which thus far only two specimens have turned 

 up. They differ from the two species we have figured in 

 being wholly devoid of discal streaks and markings upon 

 the fore wings. It is believed by recent authorities that these 



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