37 
brunneus, but one might hope to turn them all up again, if only they 
were worked for at the right time. 
THE GENUS CIDARIA. 
(Read April 16th, 1901, by LOUIS B. PROUT.) 
In preparing a paper for presentation to a British entomological 
society, I have not thought it necessary to burden the title with any 
definition of the sense in which I have employed the name Cidaria, 
although some of you will probably be aware that in Staudinger’s 
Catalog the great bulk of the Larentid species (exclusive of Eupithecia) 
are contained therein, including even such clearly-defined and natural 
genera as the Oporabia and Ypsipetes of our British lists. It is not of 
these that I propose to speak, but of the Cidaria of Guenee’s restric¬ 
tion, as introduced to British entomologists by Stainton and Doubleday 
and maintained by South. But I must confess at the outset that the notes 
which I have to lay before you are in a large measure tentative, and 
that there is still a good deal of revisional work waiting to be done, 
even in this restricted section of what Professor Grote has called 
the “ great Culanan wilderness.” Should the present paper be deemed 
very immature and defective, the only excuse I have to plead is that 
when our secretaries asked me last autumn for a contribution towards 
a session’s programme, I had no subject at all ready for presentation, 
but had been interesting myself for the last two or three years in 
certain of the Cidaria species and their relationships, and therefore 
hoped I might find something, however little, to say, which had not 
too often been said before. 
Concerning the literary history of the genus, I should be able to 
give a tolerably complete account; but I will endeavour to be as brief 
as I can, consistently with the purpose which I have in view. 
The first attempt to divide the Geometrides * into sections was made 
by Denis and Schiffermuller a century and a quarter ago, and although 
it was less successful than some parts of their classificatory scheme, 
yet it was, on the whole, a step in the right direction. Their family 
M was diagnosed as follows:—“Larvae squamosae ; Ph. Geometrae 
angulato-fasciatae. These larvae are mostly short, a little thick, and 
marked on the back through all the segments with angle-stripes or 
with half-circles, whereof the vertex, or point, is turned towards the 
head.' The metamorphosis usually takes place in a cocoon, occasion¬ 
ally between leaves near the ground. The moths have across the 
median area of the upper wings a dark-coloured transverse band, from 
which one or more angles project towards the outer margin.” They 
* I accept the late Rev. G. D. Hulst's argument that they should be accorded 
superfamily rank. Phalaenules is, however, their strictly correct name, upon 
Fabricius’ restriction of Linnc’s genus Phalaena. 
