242 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



occurs so generally and so abundantly in our pine-woods is not 

 the true variata, Schiff., but an allied form (whether species, 

 subspecies, or fixed variety is not yet positively determined) 

 appearing in Staudinger's 'Catalog' as "v. (et ab.) obeUscata, 

 Hb." In the 'Entomologist,' vol. iii. p. 84, Doubleday wrote: 

 " Thera oheliscata of Hiibner. — I send you two larvas of our 

 Thera, which I think is really distinct from the variata of 

 Hiibner,* although I believe all modern entomologists are of the 

 contrary opinion : Dr. Staudinger has sent me what he con- 

 siders intermediate varieties, but they do not seem so to me : 

 the true variata is of an olive or greenish brown, with a strongly 

 dentated central fascia; ours is always either of a rufous or 

 blackish tint, and the central fascia is scarcely at all dentated." 

 Newman, in describing the larva {torn, cit., p. 83), assents to 

 Doubleday's opinion, and in 'British Moths ' (p. 151) follows the 

 same course, maintaining the name of oheliscata. 



Staudinger (Stett. Ent. Zeit. xxii. 389, 1861) only tells us that 

 he sinks oheliscata as var. to variata hecsiuse the identity " is said 

 to be experimentally proved " and has been " confirmed to him 

 by his friend Wocke"; a highly unsatisfactory note, for which 

 I can find no experimental basis, and doubly unsatisfactory be- 

 cause Staudinger in the self-same place speaks of the two as "so 

 different in appearance," and records only the oheliscata form for 

 Bossekop. On the other side we have (apart from the ipse dixit 

 of Treitschke) to consider the following observations. Eatze- 

 burg (' Waldverderbniss,' ii. 407, 1868) says that several recent 

 observers, as Herrn Tieffenbach and Werneburg {in litt.), agree 

 that the oheliscata form lives on Scotch fir, the variata form on 

 spruce. Eossler (J. B. Nass. Ver. Nat. xxxiii.-xxxiv. 154) has 

 the same experience {variata on Finns ahies, oheliscata on Pinus 

 sijlvestris), and a like observation is quoted by Kolbe (Einfiihrung 

 Kenntu. Ins. p. 67), but probably at second- (or third-) hand, 

 as he attributes it to " Staudinger." Klemensiewicz (Verh. 

 z,-b. Ges. Wien, xliv. 188) confirms Eossler Avith the statement 

 that in Brody, where the woods are exclusively of Pinus sijlvestris, 

 he has always found only oheliscata, whereas his general expe- 

 rience with regard to Galicia is that variata is much the 

 commoner and more widely distributed. Again, Franz Schmidt 

 (Arch. Ver. Fr. Nat. Mecklenburg, xsxiii. 186, 1879) questions 

 whether Staudinger has done right in uniting them, and records 

 that oheliscata is very common in all his pine-woods twice in the 

 year, but that variata is scarce and local, and has never 

 occurred among oheliscata. And in 1888 A. Hoffmann (Stett. 

 Ent. Zeit. xhx. 172) reports variata as occurring in the Upper 

 Hartz Mountains in great numbers from the end of June to the 

 end of August, apparently in a continuous succession, very 



- Variata [Schiff.] Schmett. Wien. p. 110; Hb. fig. 293; Tr. ^i (1), 

 p. 334 {nee Hawortb).— L. B. P. 



