" THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



NOTES ON THE WAVE MOTHS (GENUS ACIDALIA, 



AUCT.)* 



By Louis B. Prout, F.E.S. 



In the above title I have retained the name " Acidalia," to 

 which the moths of which I want to speak have been so generally 

 referred ; but there are two objections to it, and I am only using 

 it as a recognizable appellation, not as a tenable genus. In the 

 first place, most modern authors consider it " preoccupied " by 

 Acidalia, Hb. Verz., p. 31, and it is just possible that was really 

 published before Acidalia, Tr. And in the second place, even if 

 the Geometrid genus {Acidalia, Tr.) has really the prior claim to 

 the name, its true type should evidently be hrumata, Linn., 

 according to the diagnoses of Schiffermiiller (Fam. K.) and 

 Treitschke. 



The so-called genus ^'Acidalia'' is somewhat nearly related 

 to the subfamily which is generally considered typical of the 

 entire superfamily Geometrides, namely the subfamily Geome- 

 trinas, or " emerald moths." The name of " wave moths," given 

 by our old English writers, is due to the pattern of the wings, 

 which is of a tolerably uniform type almost throughout them, 

 consisting of a succession of waved dark lines traversing both 

 pairs of wings, though a few species modify the pattern, e. g., 

 by blotches, especially behind the outer line. Unfortunately, 

 however, this is a rather general — probably primitive — type of 

 marking in the Geometrides, and the terribly superficial classifi- 

 ca,tions of our entomological forefathers, being based upon mere 

 wing- markings, suffered in consequence. Thus Hiibner (Verz. 

 bek. Schmett. pp. 308-12, circ. 1825), the first to attempt any 

 elaborate subdivisions, created one stirps for practically the 

 whole of the wave-marked species, giving the stirps, for no very 

 obvious reason, the name of Sphccodes — "wasp-like"; he dia- 

 gnoses it thus: " Body very slender, wings ample, that without 

 markings, these marked with waved lines" — a fair sample of 

 the classificatory characters which satisfied the old lepido- 

 pterists. As may be imagined, the genera in this stirps or family 

 were sometimes decidedly mixed as to their contents; thus, 

 Leptomeris comprised exanthemata and some true Acidaliids, 

 Asthena, candidata, luteata, and some true Acidaliids, and so on. 

 This is neither better nor worse than our vernacular, in which 

 exanthemata is the " dingy white wave," candidata the "small 

 white wave," and so on. Even so recently as 1857 the French 

 systematist, Guenee, retained the genus Asthena {candidata, &q.) 

 in his Acidalidae, and considered that his Caberidse {exanthemata, 

 &c.) also had considerable affinity with them. But his views 



■•'■ Eead before the North London Natvu-al History Society, November 

 22ud, 1904. 



