18 
CATOCALA YIDUATA. 
Secondaries have marginal band very broad, mesial moderate and strongly angulate, white 
space between the two bands, very narrow. 
A southern species although taken in a few rare instances in Pennsylvania. Examples 
are in the Mus. of the Am. Ent. Soc. and my own. The most robust and with the exception 
of the Californian C. Marmorata, the largest American Catocala. With this species has 
frequently been confounded C. Desperata Guen. a smaller and slighter built insect, common 
throughout the Middle and Southern States and which is figured in Abbot & Smith, under 
the name of Phalaeno Vidua. 
CATOCALA LACHRYMOSA. 
SPEC. GEX. YOL. VII p. 93. 
Guen ee. 
(PLATE III, FIG. 3 J) 
Expands 3 inches. 
Upper surface, primaries very dark and dusted with minute pale grey scales, transverse 
lines black, sub-terminal distinct and sometimes shaded interiorly with grey ; the grey shad- 
ings of the transverse lines are broader and brighter between the sub-median vein and interior 
margin ; whole surface of wings frosted and powdered in such a way as to make the markings 
very indistinct. 
Secondaries black, fringes white, divided by black at terminations of nervules. 
Under surface much like C. Yiduata. 
Habitat. Pennsylvania. 
1 have not seen examples from any other state ; it appears to be exceedingly local • two 
years since a dozen or so were taken in a small piece of woods, four miles from Reading, but 
iu none of the neighboring localities have I ever met with it. It is subject to much variation ; 
of six examples now before me, none agree in the depth or quantity of the dark color of pri- 
maries ; the one figured on Plate III has the black, sub-terminal line, margined with grey of 
unusual brightness, whilst in another there is no accompanying grey at all; yet another has 
the third of the wing along the interior margin deep black, like in C. Tristis, and the most 
notable var. is one in which the whole space between the transverse anterior and sub- 
terminal lines is black, whilst the space from sub-marginal line to exterior margin is remark- 
ably light and even colored, exactly after the manner of C. Scintillans ; these were all taken 
the same day in one place. 
I must confess I can see in this species none of the resemblance to C. Epione alluded to 
by Mr. Grote,* more than that they both have black inferiors ; under side of Lachrymosa is 
white, with usual black bands ; that of Epione is black, with, on primaries, a narrow white 
sub-terminal band, midway between which and the base is a small white patch commencing on 
costa and running diagonally to middle of wing; secondaries have the merest trace of a very 
narrow, almost obsolete white band running from costa a short way in. 
Trans. Am. Ent. Soc., Yol. IV, pp. 2 & 19. 
