97 
ALEUROPTERYX LUTEA (WALLENGREN) : 
A NEUROPTERON NEW TO BRITAIN. 
J. W. HESLOP HARRISON, B.Sc. 

In May of the past year I had the pleasure of discovering a 
new British Neuropteron, Conwentzia pineticola (End.) of 
the family Coniopterygidae, a fact which stimulated me to 
further investigations in this somewhat neglected group. While 
working larches and birches at Wolsingham, co. Durham, I 
beat amongst the crowd of Coniopteryx tineiformis Curtis, 
another species belonging the present group, but obviously 
differing from all the known British forms. This, on subse- 
quent examination, proved to be Aleuropteryx lutea Wallengren, 
a northern insect recorded from Sweden, Finland, Northern 
Siberia, and also from subalpine districts in Austria. Its dis- 
tribution, therefore, was such as to warrant the expectation of 
its discovery in Scotland or the North of England and this 
anticipation, as has been seen, was justified. 
All these obscure insects have been, in the past, lumped 
together under the generic name Coniopteryx in much the same 
way as all butterflies formerly rejoiced in the name Papilio, 
all hawkmoths were Sphinx, and so on. 
The present insect was no exception to the rule in spite of 
its great structural distinctness, and when first described by 
Wallengren in 1871 (Skand. Neuropt. Férsta afdelningen. 
Neuroptera Plannipennia, p. 81), he called it Coniopteryx 
lutea in which he was followed by McLachlan (£.M.M. Vol. 
AVG py 20); 
In 1885, however, Low (Bezt. zur Kenntniss der Coniop- 
terygidien. Sitzungsber, Math.-Naturw. Classe der Akad. d. 
Wissensch. in Wien Bd. XCI., Abth. I. p. 73), quite correctly 
erected the genus Aleuropteryx to receive it, and in this position 
the matter rested until, in 1906, Dr. Giinther Enderlein (Zool. 
Jahrb. XXIII., Abt. f. Sys.) perceived that the species differed 
so greatly from the commoner forms that it was worthy of 
forming the type of a new sub-family Aleuropteryginae, basing 
his action on the three jointed maxilla lobe and the paired 
series of ventral sacs on the abdomen. 
Unfortunately, at the same time, he quite unnecessarily 
split the genus into the two genera Aleuropteryx and Helico- 
conts on the rather trivial grounds of differences in neuration. 
Details of neuration in the present group, when the same 
insect may differ in its two sides, are not of generic value. 
I have one specimen of Contopteryx tineiformis differing in its 
forewings to a greater extent than do these two so-called 
genera of Enderlein’s. On these grounds, therefore, I reject 
1916 Mar. 1. 
G 
