1900. ] GROTE—GORTYNA AND ALLIED GENERA. 3849 
Further citations from English and German authors could be given, 
but since these all postdate the Verzeichniss, which fixed the type, 
they are without effect upon the result. 
My constant use of Gortyna is amply vindicated, and it is an 
unwarrantable innovation, one not authorized by Guenée himself, 
to use Aydrecia for the American species. It matters not that 
Lederer, with the indifference of his epoch to types and generic 
nomenclature, mistakingly used this genus for the European forms. 
It was natural that he should do so, because he only distinguished 
between //avago with a clypeal thorn and all the rest, and he took 
the only two terms he found in Guenée and applied them both 
wrongly. Gortyna Ochs. is his Aydrecia, and his Gortyna must 
be called Ochria Hiibn. Now, I prevented the American lists 
from unnecessary changes by adopting Gortyza for the whole genus 
except Ochria, and I complain that in the late revision an unneces- 
sary change from my determination has been made. An unfortu- 
nate grievance, relating to changes in nomenclature, has been 
lately again voiced by Mr. H. H. Lyman. But, clearly, if the 
types are ascertained and the oldest generic titles once for all deter- 
mined, there will be no further changes, or these will limit them- 
selves to subjective opinions as to the extent of the shifting con- 
ceptions we call genera. There will at least always be a certain 
type, around which the separated genera must cluster and to which 
the species can revert. For nearly forty years have I been thus 
investigating the literature and structure of the North American 
noctuids and trying to fix the right titles and types according to 
my slender resources and feeble abilities. At the present time a 
rude and conscious effort is being made to break down my work 
by misrepresentation or an ignoring of the facts brought forward, 
as in this matter of Gortyna. ‘Take another case: my determina- 
tion of Lzthophane. I here have shown that Hiibner’s Xy/ena 
was proposed in 1806 for the type “thoxylea, with which our 
ligincolor, auranticolor, cucullitformis, hutstt, etc., agree generic- 
ally ; the larvze, so far as known, have a thoracic shield. But, in 
1816, Ochsenheimer, adopting this genus with its type from Hiib- 
ner, changed the spelling to Xy/za, and placed the summer-flying 
species of Xy/ena together in one category with the autumn haunt- 
ing species of Lithophane. These ill-consorted forms could not so 
remain, and we find accordingly a separation attempted by subse- 
quent authors. But, in this effort, the original signification of 
