synonymy of the genera of Noctuites. 683 



times of the British fauna, these men complaining that 

 the student of tropical forms makes too many species. 

 As a matter of fact, no men are greater hair-splitters 

 than purely European workers. The above is only one 

 out of many instances in which one variable species has 

 been laboriously sorted out into three. Formerly N. 

 ligula was believed to be, in all probability, a variety of 

 N. spadicea, Schiff. ; but N. vaccinii was regarded as a 

 very distinct species. In Walker's Catalogue (part x., 

 p. 450) N. ligula stands as a recognised variety. 

 Staudinger, on the other hand (Cat., pp. 118, 119), calls 

 spadicea an aberration of vaccinii, but raises ligula to the 

 rank of a species. Zeller, with his seventy specimens, 

 showing every gradation between the three forms, was 

 sadly bothered ; so that he left a typical N. ligula 

 amongst his examples of G. vaccinii, and divided the 

 remainder somewhere in the middle, being evidently 

 unable to find any constant character by which to dis- 

 tinguish them. Is it not a sense of their own short- 

 comings which makes the describers of European Lepi- 

 doptera so bitter against the students of exotic species ? 



ORRHODIA, Hiibn. 



As regards the European species, I restrict this genus 

 to 0. erythrocephala, vau-punctatum, and daubei, the male 

 antennae in all of which are ornamented with series of 

 little tuft-like ciliations. 0. signata, French, decliva, 

 Grote, or descent, Butl., punctosa, Walk., and viatica, 

 Grote, must also be referred to the same genus. 



An example of 0. signata was labelled " Gl&a ancho- 

 celioides, Guen.," in the Grote collection ; but the type 

 of Guenee's species appears to me to be a female Noctua 

 allied to N. orbis, Grote. Walker associated with it five 

 other moths, representing three forms belonging to two 

 different genera ; of these the first three specimens were 

 Dyschorista cynica and its variety candens, whilst the 

 fourth and fifth were Semiophora oviduca. 



1. Orrhodia decliva. 

 Orthosia decliv<t, Grote, on label (Epiglcea, in Check 



List, p. 32, n. 746). 

 Epiglaa deleta, Grote (I. c., n. 747). 

 United States. Coll. B. M. 



