26 
excluded*) and Warren ( Proc. Zool. Soc., 1893, p. 877, where albulata 
is cited as type; also Nov. Zool. passim) ; Warren has not diagnosed 
it, but gives the reference to Stephens’ Emmelesia, “ 111.,” iii., p. 296. 
This author (Stephens), after giving the characters, admits that his 
genus “ is probably a very artificial one,” and that “ the first twelve ” 
(i.e., Guenee’s eight and rusticata) “and the last species” ( heparata ) 
differ considerably in habit from the intermediate ones and from each 
other, and adds that “ the genus must hereafter he subdivided.” As 
the only subdivider to give a diagnosis is Guenee, it is his which I must 
quote to show what we are to understand by the genus. He says (Ur. 
et Phal., ii., p. 289) : “Larvae short, attenuated at the extremities, head 
small and globose ; living sometimes exposed, sometimes enclosed in 
the seed capsules of low plants. Pupae small, pointed at the extremity, 
contained in a small earthen cocoon. Antennae short, filiform and 
hardly pubescent in the $ . Palpi short, extending little or not at all 
beyond the frons, squamous, remote, with joints indistinct. Frons 
unicolorous. Abdomen of $ slender, subconical, having at one end 
a little tuft of hairs inclining to be raised, no dorsal spots. Wings 
entire, rather slender, the fringes little or not at all interrupted 
superiors with waved lines ; the band which follows the elbowed line 
always distinct, with subterminal fine and dentated; inferior always 
paler and weakly marked.” He adds that he has conserved this small 
genus of Stephens’, which “ has sufficient characters, as one may 
satisfy oneself on examing those given above.” It is rather hard to 
say which of those characters are sufficiently sharp to mark it off from 
some of the adjacent Larentiid genera according to modern ideas. As, 
however, the object of the present paper is not to revise generic classi¬ 
fication, there is no need to go into the question in detail. The genus, 
as we have accepted it, contains all the smallest British Larentiid 
species which are not “pugs,” and most of its members agree more 
nearly with certain pugs than with their other allies in the larval 
habits, feeding during part, at least, of their lives, within seeds. Guenee 
was certainly rather fortunate in pitching upon this as a salient point 
in the genus, seeing that he only knew one species (the non-British 
hydrata ) in life, and only two others ( atfinitata and alchemillata) from 
books. We now know that not one of our eight British species is a 
normal leaf-feeder; taeniata feeds on the spores, etc., of moss, and 
will sometimes accept dry leaves in confinement, but all the others 
favour seeds, unifasciata necessarily completing its larval economy 
externally, as it soon outgrows its first home, inside the small seeds of 
Bartsia odontites. I believe all the larvae are somewhat stout, and 
have more or less of the form that Guenee ascribes to them—attenuated 
at the extremities. 
One can easily perceive that there are at least two or three groups 
contained in this genus, which groups Mr. Tutt would no doubt 
require us to make into genera, until such time as closer comparisons 
should have revealed affinities between individual members of the 
groups themselves, to justify a yet further splitting up; I have on 
previous occasions expressed the conviction that the necessary ultimate 
* By a similar creditable performance this same writer adopts “ Emmelesia* 
Stph., Gn.,” for lucteata, Pack., alone! Vide “Nova Acta” etc., lxv., 1895, 
p. 206 ). 
