THE COTTON BOLLWORM, 



{Heliotlds obsoleta Fabricius. ) 



CLASSIFICATION AND SYNONOMY. 



The adult of the bollworm is a moth belonging to the family Noc 

 tuidge, division Trifidae. Sir G. F. Hampson, in his Catalogue of 

 Lepidoptera Phalgenee in the British Museum (1903), places the species 

 in the subfamily Agrotinse. Doctor Dyar, however, in his List of 

 North American Lepidoptera,^ follows Dr. J. B. Smith in assigning 

 this species to the subfamily Noctuinae. 



The genus Heliothis was founded by Ochsenheimer in 1810 in his 

 Schmetterlinge von Europa, while the species had been described in 

 1793 by Fabricius in his Entomologia Systematica under the name 

 Bomhyx obsoleta. Hiibner in 1796 designated the insect in his Samm- 

 lung Europaischer Schmetterlinge as Noctxia armigera. Owing to its 

 great variation in color and markings, Heliothis obsoleta has at various 

 subsequent times been described as new, and it has therefore a some- 

 what extended synonomy, as follows: 



Bomhyx obsoleta Fab., Ent. Syst., 3, I, p. 456, 1793. 

 Noctua armigera liuhn., Samm. Eur. Schmett., p. 370, 1796. 

 Phalxna zea Boddie, Am. Cotton Planter, July (?) 1850. 

 Heliothis pulverosa Walk., Brit. Mus. Cat., XI, p. 688, 1857. 

 Heliothis conferta Walk., Brit. Mus. Cat., XI, p. 690, 1857. 

 Thalpoijhila rubrescens ^Ya,lk., Brit. Mus. Cat, XV, p. 1681, 1858. 

 Heliotlds uniformis Wllgrn., Wien. Ent. Monatsschr., IV, p. 171, 1860. 

 Heliothis j)unctig era Wllgrn., Wien. Ent. Monatsschr., IV, p. 171, I860. 

 ' Heliothis umbrosus Grote, Proc. Ent. Soe. Phila., I, p. 219, 1863. 

 Heliothis succinea Moore, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, p. 443, 1881. 

 Heliothis interjacens Grote, Bui. Brooklyn Ent. Soc, III, p. 30, 1882. 



The original description of Bombyx obsoleta by Fabricius^ is as 

 follows: 



B. alls deflexis flavescentibus : macula media strigaque postica obsoleta obscurioribus. 

 Habitat in Americse meridionalis Insulis Dom. Smidt. 



«Bul. 52, U. S. National Museum, p. 185, 1902. &Ent. Syst., 3, I, p. 456, 1793. 



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