MEMOIRS 



OF 



The American Museum of Natural History 



New Series, Volume III 



PART I.— ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES OF THE GENUS 

 CATOCALA BY WM. BEUTENMULLER, WITH ADDITIONAL PLATES AND TEXT 



By Wm. Barnes, M.D. and J. McDunnough, Ph.D. 



Plates I to XXII 



At the time of Mr. Wm. Beutenmiiller's withdrawal from his curatorship in The American Museum of Natural 

 History he left in the hands of the authorities a partially completed monograph of the North American species of the 

 genus Catocala. Knowing that we had ourselves been doing some slight work on this group, the Director forwarded the 

 entire material to us with the request that we look it over and decide whether or not it could be put into fit shape for 

 publication. 



The material as received by us consisted of ten plates of excellent water-color drawings of the various species and 

 two plates containing colored figures of the larvae, all drawn by the accomplished hand of Mrs. Beutenmuller; besides 

 this, there was an almost complete series of slides of the male clasping organs, of the legs, and of the palpi, together with 

 rough outline sketches of the same. The manuscript itself proved to be very incomplete, in so far as any idea of a mono- 

 graphic revision was concerned; it consisted of a fairly complete bibliography, a fresh description of each species drawn 

 up by Mr. Beutenmuller with excerpts from various authors relating to the larval stages, and, finally, a few general remarks 

 concerning habitat and the location of type specimens. 



Realizing the impossibility of our undertaking the immense amount of work involved in order to bring this manu- 

 script up to a true monographic standard and yet being unwilling to deprive the entomological world of such excellent 

 colored plates, it was suggested that they be published as ' Illustrations ' and that we prepare a more or less explanatory 

 text to the same. The present paper is the outcome of this compromise. 



In commencing the work, our first concern was to endeavor to study the early stages of as many species as possible. 

 As a result of breeding experiments carried on during several seasons, we have not only been able to verify and amplify 

 some of the older larval descriptions but also to add materially to our knowledge of the whole group. Our notes on the 

 early stages of a number of species have quite recently been published as a Museum Bulletin. 1 These notes are of necessity 

 rather brief but, owing to the kindness of Dr. Stephen A. Forbes, State Entomologist for Illinois, who placed his artist, 

 Mr. S. Fred Prince, at our disposal, we have been enabled to present five additional plates of larvae, enlarged larval 

 segments, and heads, drawn and colored from living specimens under our supervision, and these, we trust, will serve to 

 amplify our own rather meagre descriptions. 



1 1918. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., XXXVIII, pp. 147-177. 



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