Publ. 10. IV. 1926. 
ANCARISTA; MUSURGINA. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
curled, terminating in a slightly curved club, but entirely unlike the knobbed antennae of the Pemphigostola, 
so that they cannot be well combined. We keep them separated here, and as they do not approximate any 
other lepidopteral group more closely than the Zygaeninae, we range them in their neighbourhood. As to their 
habits, larvae, foodplant etc., nothing is known to me. 
A. hesperistis limps. (= [Oedimatopis] jansei Prt.) (1 a). In the $ the head, thorax and abdomen hesperist 
are black, with fine grey hairs and scales. Forewing dark lead-coloured, speckled and striated in black, whereby 
a very hazily defined antemedian, median, and 2 undulated postmedian lines are produced. Above the base 
of vein 1 a minute flesh-coloured spot, an obsolete whitish transverse bar behind the cell, and a small light 
triangle before the apex; before the margin light internerval dots. Hindwing blackish-brown with a basally 
light costal area and a light post-cellular transverse patch, the proximal area and distal area separated by a 
light stripe; fringes of both wings speckled. Zulu-Land and Transvaal. 
3. Genus: Aiicarista Jord. 
It is very doubtful whether the insect placed to this genus is ranged best here. The species has 
been described as Ovios, together with another exteriorly similar species (capensis H ,-S chaff .), and then removed 
to the Agaristid genus Euschirropterus (which otherwise occurs only in America), but in modern catalogues 
it has been left out. The antennae are nevertheless very similar to those of the Agaristidae, slightly swelling 
up towards the end and then bent over like a hook in a similar way as those of Apoprogenes. Far more peculiar, 
however, are the palpi, the last joint being knobbed like a drum stick, but in the stem of this knob slightly 
turned downwards and hardly scaled. The frons exhibits a horny plate the upper ridge of which protrudes 
somewhat out of the vertical hair. •— As the species is not mentioned in the African Agaristidae. we range it here, 
near Pemphigostola which would perhaps be also more correctly placed to the Agaristidae. It may be that also 
Paratuerta marshalli Hmps. belongs hereto. 
A. laminifer Saalm. (la). Forewing greyish-brown, with a silvery, pierced longitudinal stripe above lamini/e 
the submedian; hindwing yolk-coloured with a slightly undulate margin edged with brown. Madagascar. 
This species most strikingly and accurately exhibits the colouring of Tuerta leucographa (Vol. XV, pi. 4 d), 
so that we might think of mimicry, unless there exists a relationship indeed. The Ovios themselves form a 
group placed near Seudyra which is undoubtedly allied with the Agaristidae , but listed in the ,,Catal. Lep. 
Phalaen.“ far remote from them almost at the end of Hampson’s large subfamily Acronyctinae, though its 
position is without any doubt owing to the unmistakable Agaristid-larva living on Ampelideae. 
4. Genus: Jffiisairgima Jord. 
This genus is just as difficult to range as the preceding ones, since it is connected with the Castniidae 
by peculiarities in the neuration and with the Agaristidae by numerous other characteristics among which 
there is also a stridulation-apparatus. A frontal appendage (represented in the preceding genus by a horny 
plate) has here the shape of a flatly stunted cone. The stridulation-organ is a grooved surface without scales 
on the forewing beneath, occupying the whole cell and the area below it as far as a tubular branch of the 
submedian extending instead of the fold above the submedian almost to the margin. This stridulation-organ 
has presumably also caused the peculiar shape of the wings: the forewing has an uncommonly long costal margin 
and a very short hind-margin, being thus very long extended, but nevertheless with a rounded apex. Antenna 
with a strong, pointed club. 
M. laeta Jord. Size a trifle smaller than Pemph. synemonistis (length of forewing: I s V 2 mm), taeta. 
Colouring entirely like that of Agaristidae, almost exactly that of the American Copidryas cosyra (Vol. VII, 
pi. 1 a), whereas the shape of the forewing approximates that of Euschirropterus valkeri. Forewing reddish- 
brown with a broad, in front and behind tapering longitudinal band from the base to the rounded apex. Abdomen 
and hindwing orange, the latter with a broad black margin. Madagascar (San Diego). 
This scheme of colouring is almost only found in Agaristidae, both in Americans ( Copidryas , Tuerta 
etc.) and in Africans {Aegocera, Syfanoidea ); in the same way as the colouring of the preceding species ( laminifer) 
is found in America ( Gerrodes minataea , Vol. VII, pi. 1 k) and in Africa ( Tuerta leucographa, Vol. XV, pi. 4 d). 
The stridulation-apparatus in the forewing is also parallelled in the membrane of Darceta jalcata in America 
and Hecatesia fenestrata in Australia. The transference of all the Pemphigostolinae from the Castniidae to the 
Agaristidae may therefore be well-founded, what Jordan has already carried out. 
XIV 
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