124 Twenty-fourth Report on the State Museum. 



found in the fact that Mr. Grote has not met with the species in the 

 *' very large entomological material " received by him from Cuba, 

 constituting the Poey collections, and embracing fifty-four species of 

 Sphingidse, nor indeed with a single member of the tribe of 

 Smerinthini.^" The species could hardly fail of representation in 

 these collections if it occurred in the neighboring island of Jamaica, 

 a locality, it may be remarked, still more remote than Cuba from the 

 "Atlantic district" (Leconte), to which our American Smerinthini 

 would seem almost to be confined. 



S. Cerisyi of Kirby, the description of which is appended for 

 camparison,f is, in all probability, a simple variety of S. geininatus^ in 

 which the superior of the two blue markings has retained its normal 

 crescentic form, and the inferior one instead of its usual suboval 

 shape, has also become crescentic — thp tips of the crescents approxima- 

 ting, with their concavities directed toward one another, thus pre- 

 senting '' a black pupil, nearly hut not quite surrounded by a blue 

 iris." In some of my specimens, quite an approach to this form is 

 shown. 



Kirby's figure better represents our species than Drury's, the pri- 

 maries being very well portrayed, except in the addition of a moderate 

 excavation of the external margin, between the second and third 

 median nervules. The black spot of the secondaries is less extended 

 toward the base than usual in S. geminatus. In this latter particular 

 and in the general shape of the spot, the figure approaches the 

 European 8. ocellatus^ though difiering materially from that species in 

 the excavated apex of the primaries (acute in ocellatus), and in a more 

 conspicuous excavation at the posterior angle of the same wings. 



♦List of the Sphingidse, iEgeridfe, Zygsenidae and Bomlbycidse of Cuba.— TVaws. Amer. Eat. Soc, 

 1870, V. iii., Pi 183. 



tBody ash-colored: thorax with a large trapezoidal brown spot dilated next the abdomen: 

 primaries angulated ash-colored, with a transverse series of brown submarginal crescents in a paler 

 band, between which and the posterior margin is another obsolete paler one ; above the crescents is 

 a straight whitish band, and a linear angular forked one, under the internal sinuses of which the 

 wings are clouded with dark brown ; underneath, the above markings of the wings are very 

 indistinct : the secondaries are rose-color, paler at the costal and posterior margins ; underneath 

 they are dusky cinereous, with a whitish band coinciding with that of the primaries, a transverse series 

 of crescents and a dentated brownish band, all rather indistinct: but the most conspicuous character 

 of the secondaries is a large eyelet situated at the anal angle, consisting of a black pupil, nearly but 

 not (iuite surrounded by a blue iris, aud situated in a black triangular spot or atmosphere, which 

 extends to the anal angle, aud is surmounted by some blue scales : the abdomen above is dusky ash 

 colored. 



This insect appears to be the American representative of S. ocdlatus., from which, however, it 

 differs considerably. It comes very near /S. geminatus (Say, Am. Ent. i. t xii,) but in that the eyelet 

 has two blue pupils. Taken in North America, locality not stated.— -i^'awn. Boreali-Americana, 1837, 

 vol. iv., p. 301. 



