28 
whitish, except a very narrow stripe of the ground colour which forms 
the outer boundary of the customary whitish band. I have only one 
of this pretty form, but there is another, though rather less extreme, 
in the British Museum collection. As is usual with this type of 
variation (compare Entom. xxxvii., pp. 155-6), the dark colour in the 
central area is well consolidated, as if to enhance the contrast. 
Herrich-Schaffer’s figure (not description) might almost represent 
yet another aberration, as it shows a partial suppression of the dark 
markings in the central area (excepting its boundaries) and in the 
marginal (between veins 3 and 7), but as he only possessed a 
worn example, which was presumably the one figured, I think it wiser 
not to over-emphasize these peculiarities. At the same time, the 
British Museum collection contains one A bearing some analogy to it 
in respect of the large central spot surrounded with pale colour, and 
my own series includes some (apart from ab. clara) in which there 
does not seem to be much of the dark colour in the marginal area of 
the fore wings. 
Rheumaptera gothicata Gn. (Spec. Gen, x., p. 388, 1858) was 
erected as a separate species intermediate between ictcrata Gn. (pi. ix., 
fig. 9, said to be from Australia, but probably by error, compare 
Mevrick, Proc. Linn. Soc. A. S. W., (2) v., p. 879) and hastata, making 
its blackest form his type, its whitest, most //astata-like his var. B, 
and an intermediate form (the white band continued on hindwing) 
var. A. It was first sunk to hastata by Moeschler in 1860, in Ins 
valuable “ Beitriige zur Lepidopteren-Fauna von Labrador” (Wien. 
Ent. Monats., iv., p. 374) ; he gives good figures (pi. x., fig. 4-5) of 
the two females which he had received, the first of which (no doubt 
fig. 5) had been determined by Zeller as gothicata Gn., while the 
second (a less extreme form) removed all his doubts as to its specific 
identity “ with hastata,” its underside, in particular, showing “ not 
the slightest difference therefrom.” In Stett. Ent. Zeit., xxxi., p. 370, 
he is equally emphatic in claiming it as a var. of hastata “ and not 
even an essential one.” The American forms are excessively variable, 
and some^whiter forms are now known (Anticosti, St. Martin’s Falls, 
Otegon, C olorada, British Columbia, etc., and especially Vancouver I.) 
which are hardly distinguishable from certain forms of European 
hastata and var. subhastata ; but the point which has struck me in all 
the true dark gothicata which I have seen (and in a few paler Ameri¬ 
cans) is the less irregular outer margin of the central fascia, and 
especially the fact that it reaches the inner margin with an outward 
curve, often, indeed, its entire low T er half is directed somew-hat 
obliquely towards tornus. Moeschler (Stett. Ent. Zeit., xliv., p. 122) 
also notices slight differences between his S. Labrador 2 hastata and 
the European. There may possibly be two distinct species mixed up 
in America, but I am not prepared with any convincing evidence of 
this. On the whole it is simplest to use the name gothicata Guen. 
as merely varietal, for the blackened American forms, and to treat the 
New World examples with the white preponderating (Pack., Monogr., 
pi. ix., fig. 11) as, for the present, synonymous with the type. 
Rheumaptera subhastata Nolck. (Verh. zool.-hot. Ges. Wien, xx., 
p. 68, 1870)i = § hastata Hb. fig. 356, nec Hb. Beitr., was first made 
known by Hiibner’s figure in the “ Sannnlung,” just cited; but as the 
same author had earlier used that name for another species (the 
