40 
he also makes a point of the feeble, slender palpi, and I think he is 
the first to draw attention to the oblique placing of the outer margin 
of the cell, a character which becomes further intensified in the 
(probably allied) Indian genus Discoloxia , Warr. The rest of the 
contents of Packard’s genus Kpirrita are E. perlineata, Pack., and 
E. 12-lineata, Pack., the former of which is wrongly sunk, in the 
British Museum Collection, to lucata, Gn. (a Enchoeca , on Hulst’s 
system — Dyar, List N. Amer. Lop., p. 275, No. 8,835), while Hulst 
sinks it, instead, to Venusia comptaria, Walk., which looks to me more 
of a true Venusia, and rightly supersedes both these species of 
Packard’s and come nearer to cambrica than to dilutata, 12-lineata : 
none of the three have really pectinated $ antennas, nor, I think, 
the broad frons, and Meyrick will place them all in Euchoeca, not 
Veniisia. 
The next noteworthy contribution to the classification was that of 
Meyrick. In his well-known paper (Trans. Ent. Soc. Land., 1892, p. 
75), he releases cambrica from the company of all its Holarctic allies 
known to him, and re-diagnoses Venusia, Curt., in such a way as to 
differentiate it definitely (by neuration, etc.) from the neighbouring- 
genera Asthma, Euchoeca, etc. Astliena is reserved for species with the 
areole double; it is described (p. 74) as “a genus of a few scattered 
species,” and seems a very unhappy one, its European representatives 
being given as dilutata, Schiff., Jilvjrammaria , H-S., (autumnata, Bkh.), 
murinata, Scop., candidata, Schiff., nymplndata, Gn. ; but it serves a 
useful purpose in correcting Packard’s confusion of dilutata with 
cambrica, and restoring currency to Curtis’s generic name for the latter. 
Euchoeca contains the rest of Herrich-Schaffer’s Hydreliae (excepting 
cambrica), and has the areole simple, as in Venusia ; it comes very near 
this latter, the only differential characters indicated being in the palpi— 
“ porrected, slender ” in Venusia —and in the £ antennas—“shortly 
ciliated” in Euchoeca, “ bipectinated, apex simple” in Venusia. Of 
the latter genus, as here restricted, Meyrick only knows four species, 
cambrica, Curt., rerriculata, Feld., xanthaspis, Meyr., undosata, Feld. ; 
the three last-named are New Zealand species, and were made the types 
of three separate genera in Meyrick’s earlier works (A r . Z. Journ. Sci., 
i., pp. 526, 527 ; Trans. N. Z. Inst., xviii., p. 184), but their author 
came to the same conclusion as did Snellen (Tijd. Ent., xxxii., p. 207), 
that the minor neurational characters upon which they were mainly 
founded—point of origin of veins 6 and 7 of forewings, etc.— 
were too inconstant to be of generic worth. But I cannot help thinking 
that he has gone to the other extreme in uniting those New Zealand 
species with cambrica, and I suspect—though only on superficial grounds 
I fear—that a closer knowledge of their structure and economy will 
teach us that their close resemblance to Venusia, in the Meyrickian 
characters, is in part accidental, and that they are really an independant 
development of the Euchoeca—Hydrelia stock ; in that case Meyrick’s 
genus Epipliryne, with type undosata, Feld., will need resuscitating 
for them. Through the kindness of my old frend Mr. Ambrose Quail, 
who has given me a number of Geometrides which he collected during 
his residence in New Zealand, I am able to exhibit four specimens of 
this charming little species. 
Meyrick’s classificatory work was quickly followed up by Hampson’s, 
and in volume iii. of his “ Moths of India” (1895), on p. 415, we get 
