29 
I had a suspicion that there might be in one of our European 
species, Acidalia nemoraria, Hub., an exceptional or doubtful case. In 
this insect the venation shows a slight variation in the direction of 
that of Ptychopoda, though it does not amount to much ; but what 
had more weight was a statement made in conversation by my friend 
Mr. E. M. Dadd, of Berlin, who has bred the species, to the effect that 
its larva was more of the stumpy Ptychopoda type than of the typical 
Acidalia. The genitalia, however, establish the evidence of the leg- 
structure, and until the larvse are investigated in more detail I shall 
be quite satisfied -with the present position of the species. There is a 
very similar species in the extreme east of the Palrearctic Region 
(Japan, Shanghai, etc.)—so similar, indeed, that I rather suspect it is 
the one which even the great Staudinger recorded from eastern Siberia 
(Iris x, 19), as nemoraria —in -which my interest has been aroused 
through the work of my friend Dr. Culpin, of Shanghai, -who has kindly 
sent me a very fine series. Its correct name is clearly superior, Butl., 
Atm. May. Nat. Hist. (5) i. 400, which was described from Japan ; but 
it is by no means certain that another supposed Japanese species of 
Butler’s (A. sancta, Butl., Tr. Ent. Soc. Lond., 1881, 413) does not 
represent the first brood of it. Unfortunately I have not yet any 
material agreeing accurately enough with this type of Butler’s to allow 
of my getting this latter question investigated ; but in regard to that 
of the specific difference between nemoraria and superior, I am able to 
state—and to show you from the drawings which Mr. Burrows has 
kindly prepared—that the genitalia sho-w very great differences, though 
both are true Acidalia. Superior, at least in its typical form, is quite 
a small moth, but you must not regard that as giving a reliable 
differentiation from nemoraria. In Europe, where very few 7 of the 
group are double brooded at all, seasonal dimorphism hardly has to be 
taken into account, and there is generally so little variation in size 
that we (or at any rate I) get into the habit of grouping our species 
into the large, the medium-sized, and the small, and perhaps even 
using that as a preliminary guide to determination ; but from what 
Dr. Culpin has already learned of Shanghai, e.y., with respect to the 
species of Abraxas, I shall not be in the least surprised to find that a 
moderately large species ( sancta) and a small one ( superior ) are two 
generations of the same thing ; and there is not much to choose 
between the size of sancta and that of nemoraria. 
The British Museum material in this white group of Acidalia I 
found to be in the direst confusion. A. sancta was sunk to the 
European punctata, Scop.; whereas superior was united with nupta, 
Butl. (Ann. May. Nat. Hist. (5), i., 401), another Japanese form, to 
make up a second supposed species. But (a very big BUT) punctata 
has a dark fuscous face, sancta a white one; superior a white face, 
nupta a dark one. The two white-faced forms may, as I have already 
said, have to be united ; the two dark-faced ones ( punctata and nupta ) 
will certainly not. I have only mentioned the matter here because I 
want to point out that another of the “ compensations ” that Nature 
gives us for similarity of wing-markings in Acidalia (as also in one 
or two difficult “ Emerald ” genera) is often found in some widely 
different frontal coloration ; and no careful entomologist can afford to 
ignore the face merely because it is not conspicuous when the insect 
xx. 
