IS9S.] 197 



on old walls near Perth : I imagine that his diagnosis was founded on 

 the examples which he sajs were bred by Mr. C. Gr. Barrett in June, 

 1870, for his own series only contains four specimens, of which one 

 is unlabelled, while the other three are labelled respectively, " C. Gr. P. 

 24/11/71," "e. 1. 15/6/71. Moss. Perth. P. B. White," and " e. 1. 

 1/6/71. Moss. Perth. P. B. White," and it seems certain that he 

 possessed none of these last three at the time when his paper was 

 written. He there differentiates it from qffinis and umbrosella, but 

 fails to notice its much closer relationship to similis, probably owing 

 to the fact that his series of this last, which is almost free from ir,- 

 terlopers, includes only caught specimens, which are much older and 

 browner : their history is unknown to me, for eleven are unlabelled, 

 while the remaining one is ticketed " 1019," but not in Stainton's 

 writing, so that his notebooks afford no explanation of it. Southern 

 and eastern similis, bred from similar tufts of moss collected on old 

 walls and roofs, agree absolutely with specimens from the north of 

 England and Perthshire, except that they are on the whole not so 

 black, though fully as dark as some even of those bred from Perth : 

 it may, therefore, be as well to retain the name conjinis for the 

 blackest form of the insect. 



Owing to the difficulty of finding individual larva? sparingly 

 scattered among masses of moss, I have been unable to compare to- 

 gether those of southern O. similis and northern var. conjinis, so can 

 only say that they feed at the same time on similar mosses, and that 

 the moths emerge simultaneously. 



Meyrick, HB. Br. Lep., 589 (1895), sinks conjinis as a dark 

 northern form of G. offinis, Dgl.,but this is clearly erroneous, for the 

 former never shows the peculiar characteristics by which all the forms 

 of the latter may be readily recognised, and which include a pale 

 ochreous spot at the extreme base of the fore-wing, an additional 

 {i. e., a fourth) black spot which lies on the fold towards the base, the 

 presence of numerous pale ochreous scales scattered over the ground 

 colour, and of some longitudinal dashes of pale ochreous scales 

 following each of the three anterior black stigmata. Affinis also has 

 all the pale scales and the pale fascia much more ochreous, and the 

 latter much more constant and more strongly pronounced than similis. 



Although in I. B. Lep. Tin., p. 115 (1854), Stainton correctly 

 attributes O. affinis to Haworth, he says in Nat. Hist. Tin., ix, 158 

 (1865), "The nffinis of Haworth and Stephens can, of course, now 

 only be quoted as doubtful synonyms," and in the synonymy ascribes 

 it to Douglas, notwithstanding that in the paper to which he (Stainton) 

 refers (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., N. S., i, 17 [1850]), Douglas particu- 



