20 VARIETIES OF NOCTUJE 



as it were, a dark central band broken across its centre by the pale 

 median nervure. This is probably Guenee's var. fi, of which he 

 writes : " Large, of a deep greyish-black slightly tinted with brown, 

 with all the typical areas and markings of an obscure ashy colour. 

 The basal spot alone yellowish. The inferior wings entirely of a deep 

 greyish-black in both sexes." He then adds : " This beautiful variety 

 which one might easily mistake for a distinct species, if one had not 

 before him a large number of specimens, has been reared from the 

 same caterpillar as the type, by Mr. Anderregg of Gamsen. It is 

 designated wrongly, in the Paris collections, under the name of 

 trigonalis of Esper, which is exactly opposite to it in colour and 

 markings " (' Noctuelles,' vol. v., p. 263). * 



#. sub- var. lineolata, mihi. A sub- var. of the type occurs, in which 

 the wedge-shaped or cuneiform dashes extend outwards to the hind 

 margin of the wing. I have such specimens from Sligo, Deal and the 

 Breck District (where they were captured by Mr. W. Farren). All 

 mine are grey or greyish-fuscous in colour, but whatever the ground 

 colour, I would include such sub-varieties under the name of 

 lineolata. 



Agrotis obelisca, cursoria, and tritici. 



Some few years ago, when I first began studying local variation, 

 the tritici-cursoria-obelisca group of the Agrottdw presented so many 

 difficulties, that, for a long time, I could make but little headway. I 

 had received local forms of tritici from different correspondents as 

 obelisca and aquilina, and had consequently formed opinions based on 

 these specimens. During the first few years I stayed at Deal ('82 and 

 following years), I worked continuously at the NOCTUJE, and got 

 together a series of specimens which I was convinced were all one 

 species, but which satisfied my correspondents' ideas of tritici, aquilina, 

 obelisca and cursoria. Newman also, in his ' British Moths,' p. 329, 

 looked upon cursoria as a Kent coast species, so it was no wonder I 

 got into a muddle, and in the ' Entomologist ', vol. xviii., pp. 94-96, I 

 put my trouble in print and stated, most decidedly, that I believed 

 our Southern tritici, aquilina and obelisca to be only different forms of 

 one species, keeping, however, certain forms distinct under the name 

 of cursoria. This paper of mine produced some discussion in the same 

 volume of the * Entomologist,' and led me to correspond with several 

 Continental lepidopterists who kindly interchanged specimens with 

 me. I very soon found that my " very decided opinion " was right, 

 and that (so far as I understood the species) all our Southern specimens 

 were one species, but I discovered that the so-called cursoria of our 

 Kent coasts was nothing of the kind, neither was our Kent obelisca 

 that species ; but having at last strictly defined the different species, 

 I was able to proceed satisfactorily. It appears to be no wonder that 

 many had been misled, for some of our leading NOCTU^E lepidopterists 

 stated, that they had never seen anything like some of the beautiful 

 forms of tritici I had obtained, and I sent a large number also to the 

 Continent, where they were at once referred to various named varieties 

 of different authors. The Perthshire and Berwick lepidopterists in 

 the North, and Mr. A. J. Hodges in the South of Britain, have distributed 

 a very considerable number of true obelisca during the last few years ; 

 and first, Mr. Percy Euss from Sligo, and afterwards, the Aberdeen col- 



