Pull. 26. XI. 1918. 
NOLINAE. General Topics. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
233 
Although there are groups among the American Arctiidae, that are much more closely allied to the 
preceding family of the Syntomidae than the Nolinae and Lithosiinae, we let them follow here at first, in order 
not to upset the conformity with the ranges of the other faunae. We then put the Phaegopterini in the place 
of the palearctic Hypsinae, and instead of the Callimorphinae and Nyctemerinae being absent in America and 
allied to the Hypsinae , we append there the Pericopinae, being likewise allied to them, whereby we obtain 
the following schedule: 
1. Nolinae 
2. Lithosiinae 
3. Phaegopterinae 
4. Micrarctiinae 
S. Nolinae. 
The group of genera, of which the stock of American Nolinae is composed, comprises the very same 
genera representing this subfamily also in the other faunae, the genera Nola, Roeselia and Celama. Only a 
single species, Nigetia formosalis , has been assigned to another genus. America, with about 90 forms, possesses 
approximately half of all the Nolinae known; but according to Dyar’s Catalogue, only 16 of them fall to the 
nearctic fauna conform to Wallace’s conception i. e. to the boreal parts of America to the south as far as 
the Mexican frontier. All the others are neotropical. 
A general characterization of the subfamily has been given in Vol. II, p. 44 and supplemented in Vol X 
p. 107. The statement made there, that the superficial habitus of the Nolinae strongly recalls that of certain 
microlepidoptera, refers also to the Americans, and this implies that Nolinae are captured only when hunting 
for microlepidoptera, while in the search for macrolepidoptera they are mostly overlooked. 
In their size, shape, colouring, early stages, and habits the Nolinae of all the continents are so much 
alike, that the Americans among them need hardly be specially characterized. They are wont to sit, like certain 
Acalla (Teras ), with their heads turned upwards on the trunks of trees and planks and do not like to fly in 
daytime, so that one is obliged to search for them carefully or to beat them out; at night they sometimes come 
to the lamp. The method of making the food-leaf recognizable by skeletonized feeding places is quite common 
to some Americans as well as to certain palearctic species, and the larva of Celama triquetrana in North America 
leaves behind the same tell-tale traces of feeding on the leaves of Hamamelis virginica as the European Roeselia 
togatulalis do on oak-bushes. 
Moreover, there is as yet very little known of the American species with respect to their life -history. 
About the South Americans we do not know anything at all, and from the United States Henry Edwards 
only knew the food-plant and larva of Celama sorghiella and ovilla. The reason of our scanty knowledge of 
the ATJwae-larvae is partly based on their rareness and insignificance, but partly also in their living so very 
much concealed; even those few species that do not retire far into the density of the leaves, constantly hide 
during daytime on the underside of a leaf. 
As to the peculiar habit of the larva not to cast off the head of the old skin when shedding their skin, 
but to carry it on a hair-pencil above the neck, we refer to Vol. X (1. c.). The scaphoid web is not only 
conspicuous by its shape, but also by its construction, since it is not woven round like other cocoons, but there 
are at first two walls erected and then this groove is covered with a roof, which method was already 
known to Treitschke. In this casing the pupa lies being mesodorsally somewhat depressed. The imago, by 
the pads of erect scales, deviates from the other Arctiidae, except certain Lithosiinae, some of which, such as 
some Chionaema and the genus Parelictis exhibit conspicuous formations in the very same places of the forewings, 
where we find hairy pads in the Nolinae. In Parelictis (Vol. X, t. 18 i) this is a knob-like swelling near the 
cell-end, in Chionaema pratti (Vol. II, t. 12 c) a hair-curl on a fold of the wing. 
Although we cannot infer a particularly close relation between the Nolinae and Lithosiinae from this 
formation alone, yet we consider their insertion here to be less inappropriate than the one preferred in other 
catalogue-works. Whilst Staudinger in his Catalogue (1871) places them quite correctly at the head of the 
„Lithosiidae li , Rebel (1910) places them next to the Cymatophorid Axia margarita and together with it between 
the Geometrids on the one hand and the Noctuid genus Sarrotliripus on the other hand (!). Dyar, in his ,,List 
of North-American Lepidoptera“ scarcely more appropriately places them between the Epiplemidae and the 
strange Lacosomid Cicinnus melsheimeri , consequently near the Psychidae. We also range it in the American 
fauna before the Lithosiinae, after the Syntomidae, since they also exhibit relations to the Arctiinae. In Kirby’s 
Catalogue they are directly included in the Lithosiidae, which is well justifiable. 
Nearly all the Nolinae are in their occurrence locally bound to certain slopes of mountains, clearings 
in forests and the like, and seem not easily to leave their birth-place. Nevertheless some are widely distributed: 
some species {Cel. cicatricalis, centonalis and others) extend from France to China or Japan, and squalida pro- 
5. Spilosominae 
6. Arctiinae 
7. Pericopinae 
VI 
30 
