1900. | GROTE—GORTYNA AND ALLIED GENERA. ool 
bles in appearance rather Gortyna limpida or cerussata. In my 
subsequent lists I have kept up this reference. The value of this 
genus depends on the clypeal protuberance which the species of 
Gortyna lack. It is the same with Sphzda obligua, which differs in 
a like manner from the species of Arzama. Ochria is thus rather 
an artificial than a natural phyletic assemblage of species, which 
seem to have arisen, here and there, out of forms having an un- 
armed clypeus. Not impossibly are cazaphracta without and flavago 
with a clypeal protuberance phyletically related, the European 
species having acquired the projection since the tertiaries. 
If Ochria be for reason dropped, a new term must be supplied. 
Flavago (ochracea) became virtually the type through Guenée’s 
entire action in 1852. Up to 1875 the term seems to have been 
neglected. 
HyDRECIA. 
1841. Guenée, Am. Soc. Ent. Fr., T. 10, Noct. Eur. Index 
Meth., p. 237: cupreea, leucostigma (fibrosa), micacea (cypri- 
aca), ictitans (var. fucosa). 
This is the earliest mention of Mydrecéa I can find in litera- 
ture. No type is mentioned. I cannot positively trace cuprea ; 
cuprea H. is probably the same and an Agvotis ; Leucostigma is 
made the type of He/otropha Led., 1857, and might apparently 
have been taken for Aydrecia; micacea was already the type of 
Gortyna Ochs., in 1816; nctitans is apparently congeneric. The 
anal claspers should not be used for generic or sectional characters, 
their taxonomical value is cumulative, not independent. To dis- 
tinguish the American specimens of zzcfitans from the European 
generically on account of a supposed difference in the anal claspers 
of the male is an absurdity, and yet this is what the course adopted 
by the Revisionist really amounts to. If it is ‘‘structural,’’ the 
difference might naturally be considered generic, 7. ¢., higher than 
specific. But these are secondary sexual characters, not to be used 
as independent and generic or sub-generic, and I should judge 
them to be of even less value than the male antennz. At any rate, 
solely upon them, no genus in the Noctuids can be recognized and, 
if no genus, then no section of a genus. Of the foregoing species 
there remained only /eucostigma as an unemployed type when 
fHHydrecta was proposed. ‘There is no description given by Guenée 
of the genus Hydrecia in the /ndex. 
PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XxxIx. 162. W. PRINTED auGustT 7, 1900. 
