Mr. A* R. Grote on the Mot/is of yew Mexico. 49 



VII. — The Moths of New Mexico. By AUG. R. Grote, 

 President of the New- York Entomological Club*. 



During the last ten years our knowledge of the Lepidopterous 



fauna of the western and south-western regions of the United 

 States has greatly increased. If I might connect a pleasant 

 incident to American entomologists with this advance in their 

 study, I should refer to Lord Walsingham's visit and the 

 collections made by his lordship in the west as the eonunence- 

 ment of our later progress towards a better knowledge of our 

 fauna. Within the last few years the collections made by 

 Mr. Morrison in Montana and Washington Territory, and 

 again in 1882 in Arizona, together with the numerous tine 

 species discovered by Mr. Dall in Arizona and Southern Colo- 

 rado, have given us a good idea of the Lepidoptera of those 

 regions, still difficult of access to the collector, whose journey 

 thither from the east is an expensive one. 



Two expeditions to New Mexico by Professor F. H. Snow, 

 of the State University of Kansas, have resulted in the dis- 

 covery of a proportionally large number of new species of 

 moths. The material gathered at both times has been sub- 

 mitted to me; and the object of the present paper is to give 

 a list of those species of moths collected in 1882. The speci- 

 mens were taken near Las Vegas, at an elevation of about 

 7000 feet above the level of the sea. From his first trip 

 Prof. Snow did not return without running some risk of a 

 surprise by the Apaches, a tribe of Indians who are not so 

 calculating as the brigands of Italy or Greece, but scalp and 

 plunder the white traveller out of hand. 



As might be expected, the species collected include tropical 

 or subtropical forms ; but what might not be expected is that 

 they ajso offer representatives of European species not yet 

 found near either our western or eastern sea-boards. In New 

 Mexico and Arizona we find a mixture of species which throws 

 some light upon the origin of our present fauna, and allows 

 us to study the elements of which it is composed. First, we 

 have a stronger admixture of tropical forms, as in the genus 

 llypercJiiria, which no doubt is an intruder on our territory 

 from the south. Whereas in the east we have only one 

 species (To) which, with more or less variation, extends from 

 Maine to Texas, and penetrates to New Mexico and Colorado, 

 we have three other species from Arizona, New Mexico, and 

 Southern Texas respectively, viz. pamina } Neum., zephyria^ 

 Grote, and Zetlcri, Grote and Robinson. There is next an 



* Communicated by A. G. Butler. 



N. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol. xi. 



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