December, 1S94. 1 265 



CONGEATULATOET 



TO 



JOHN WILLIAM DOUGLAS, 



ON THE OCCASION OF HIS SOtH BiETHDAT, 



witli the Best Wishes of his Colleagues, in which they will be joined 

 by a large number of friends. 



loth Novemher, 1894. 



THE BEITISH SPECIES OP THE aENUS PSYCHE, AND ITS ALLIES. 



BY C. G. BAEEETT, E.E.S. 



{Concluded from page 251). 



Efmea, Hiib. — The species of this genus have given me a great 

 deal of trouble and anxiety. Undoubtedly the easier plan, and one 

 worthy of very serious consideration, is to lump the majority of them 

 together, as Mr. Staintou has done, under the name of nitidella. 



There are, however, two difficulties in the way of this : — one is, 

 that Hiibner's figure of nitidella really does not represent either 

 of the forms, and it is uncertain what species he had before him. 

 This point has been gone into at considerable length, and with great 

 care, by Bruand, and his conclusion is, I think, incontrovertible, that 

 the name nitidella should be abandoned. The other difficulty is that, 

 although difficult to separate, there certainly exist different forms, or 

 races, and that our knowledge of them is not sufficient to enable us 

 at present to say that they are not distinct species. Bruand gave 

 great care to their elucidation, and achieved some success. Of his 

 species we appear to have six. 



FuMEA ceassioeella, Bruand. — Introduced as British by the late Mr. E, Bond 

 in 1868. Afterwards taken by Dr. Knaggs and Mr. Mitford, its localities being 

 Hornsey Wood and Bishop's Wood, Highgate. This is the largest of this genus 

 with us, being six-tenths of an inch (15 mm.) in expanse. Its wings are rather 

 broad, of an elongate ovate shape, clothed, but not very densely so, with large, 

 glistening, dark purplish-brown scales ; the hind-wings rather paler ; cilia faintly 

 paler at the tips. Female plump, completely bent into a hump, almost a semicircle, 

 so' that the anal segment touches its case almost in contact with the head. The liead 

 is small, horny and shining, the body reddish, with six bars of black-browfn colour, 

 of a rectangular form, on the backs of the segments after the 4th ; the 2nd, 3rd, and 

 4th, which are rallier contracted, are covered, in each case, by a blackish horny 

 shield. The legs are long and strong. Tlie anal extremity is abruptly torniinated 



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