INSECTS OF SAMOA 



Part III. Fasc. 3 



6E0METRIDAE 

 By Louis B. Prout, F.E.S. 



(With 2 Text-figures, and 1 Plate.) 



Existing knowledge of the Geometridae of the Samoan Islands is totally 

 inadequate, and indeed scarcely extends beyond the few species collected by 

 Woodford at Apia, Upolu, and described by Warren (Nov. Zool., iv, 1897) from 

 types in the Tring Museum, and the few — partly of uncertain determination — ■ 

 recorded by Rebel (Denkschr. K. Akad. Wiss. Wien, Math.-Naturw. Kl., lxxxv, 

 1910 ; Jahrb. Hamb. Wies. Anstalt, xxxii, Beiheft 2, 1915). Rebel's two memoirs 

 are further of value as containing some topographical and bibliographical 

 notes, but these do not concern the Geometridae in particular. 



As to the Geometrid fauna of Polynesia in general and of the most easterly 

 islands of Melanesia, our present information is equally fragmentary, excepting 

 only as regards New Zealand at one extreme and the Hawaiian Islands at the 

 other. Mr. Meyrick (Fauna Hawaiiensis, i, (2), 124 seq. 1899) has made some 

 very interesting and thought-provoking comparisons, suggesting certain ancestral 

 connections between the New Zealand and Hawaiian Lepidoptera ; but it 

 seems clear that Samoa (together with Tonga) has received its Geometridae 

 from the west, and there is no need, on the present occasion, to make more than 

 a passing reference to those connections. With the Fijian species there are 

 some definite affinities ; but indeed the general homogeneity of the great Indo- 

 Australian fauna (omitting the Subantarctic and North Pacific elements) is 

 strikingly shown by the very close generic agreements, and even in some cases, 

 so far as can at present be determined, by the actual identity of species (e.g. 

 Anisodes obliviaria, Eupithecia eupitheciata, Micrulia tenuilinea, Gymnoscelis 

 refusaria, Orsonoba clelia). 



in (3) 1 



