Among several species of insects which have lately come to the notice of the Division of Entomology of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, through their ravages upon greenhouse violets, is a little species of plant-louse known to florists as the black or brown aphis. The species is now very generally distributed in the United States and occurs in Canada, although it was not known until within five or six years from the time of writing. As it appears to be undescribed, I propose the specific name violœ, and have placed it in the genus Rhopalosiphum, to which it appears to belong. The following description is submitted, pending a more detailed account of the injuries and a consideration of remedies which it is expected will shortly be published by the Department of Agriculture.

A constant succession of surprises has taken place during the year 1899, owing to the absence of species and even whole genera that I have taken in previous years in some abundance, their places being occupied by forms new to me. I thought that the list of Manitoba Lepidoptera by Mr. Hanham, now being published, would be fairly complete, considering the amount of material at his disposal; but my work of last summer, so far as I have identified the result, will add several species to the list, and I have yet a number of specimens, about which I am in doubt, to submit to Dr. J. B. Smith, who has very kindly undertaken the task of naming my new things.

Of late years a few collectors have been sending material from various points in Western Canada, Manitoba and British Columbia. Mr. Dod at Calgary, Mr. Hanham at Winnipeg, and Mr. Heath at Cartwright, have collected many interesting species. Dr. Fletcher has sent me examples from other collectors in the same general region, so that we have now some little basis for a judgment as to the general character of the Noctuid fauna.

I thought I had “said my say” on the Cunea-Congrua question, but Mr. Lyman's attack upon me demands a reply.

Mr. Lyman has made a military allusion in rather questionable taste. I would remind him that the reason the Boers have stuck to their guns is that, until now (May, 1900), their opponents have not been able to capture their guns, but have, on the other hand, furnished the Boers with new artillery and fresh stores of ammunition.

On the evening of the 31st July, 1899, while collecting moths at the electric light, close to the entrance to the Central Experimental Farm, I was fortunate enough to secure a female of Euprepia Caja, L., var. Americana, Harr. I enclosed her alive in a small box over night, and by the morning she had laid nine eggs. From these eggs five larvæ hatched, and as I have succeeded in bringing two of these through all their stages, my notes may be of interest to some of the readers of the Canadian Entomologist.

Egg.—Semi-ovoid, about .75 mm. in width, at widest part; pale yellowish, smooth, shiny.

Laverna argentimaculella, n. sp.

Imago: Antennœ dark brown, slightly paler on under side. Palpi pale silvery, terminal joint in strong light appearing minutely ringed with dark blue. Head and face smooth, the former dark blue above, face pale golden-metallic, in the ♂ usually darker than in the ♀, in the latter often with bluish tinge. Thorax dark blue with metallic reflections. Fore wings with a generally “shaggy” appearance, beautifully variegated in dark and light blue and rich bronzy brown, with more or less conspicuous, irregular, appressed, silvery spots, that, at the base of the apical third, form an irregularly margined fascia, broader and more brilliant in the ♂ than in the ♀. Upon the cell, especially of the ♂, are two prominent tufts, bluish silvery at base, shading to brown, and near the outer margin two still larger tufts, almost connected, forming a ridge across the wing. Just before the fringes is an indefinitely angular, silvery streak, the apex directed outward. The pattern of coloration is so variable that it is difficult to exactly characterize it. Hind wings and abdomen rich bronzy brown, the former with pale brown fringes. Legs brown, annulate on tibiæ with two broad and on tarsi with three narrow white bands. Alar expanse, 8 mn.; length, 4 mm. A beautiful species and probably rare.

Psorophora ciliata, Fabr., is the only species of the genus Psorophora known to occur in the United States. It is a widespread species and is known to the writer to occur in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, Vilginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Nebraska, Texas and California. It is, however, rare in its northern range and seems to be a lower austral form. It may have a tropical range, but among many mosquitoes received by the writer during the past year from Mexico, Nicaragua and Cuba, this species does not occur. In his “Notes on the Mosquitoes of the United States” (Bulletin 25, New Series, Division of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture), published August 23rd, 1900, the writer calls attention to the fact that Psorophora and Megarhinus have not been studied by investigators engaged in working upon the transfer of Haematamoebæ by mosquitoes, and urges that physicians and bacteriologists in our Southern States pay some attention to the mosquitoes of these genera.

In developing a general view of the changes in the neuration of the lepidopterous wing, the mass of detail in any one paper may obscure, for the reader, the statement of the assumed plan of progression. This seems to be, briefly, a simplification of the longitudinal systems of veining, and attained through a process of reduction. Where this progress would interfere with the serviceableness of the organ, the dormant tracheæ in the tegument may, in speciar cases, develop accessory veins, such as the humeral spurs of the Lachneids, the cross branches and extra veins in Tineides, and, as I have suggested, the so-called precostal spur (at one time vein I. of Comstock) on the hind wings of the diurnals. The cubital and discal cross-veins may be, however, survivals of a former system of cross-veins, since we apprehend them in various stages of retrogression. But they may be also what I call sub-secondary: produced at one time to be abandoned at another. Still, this latter is a rather violent theory. It is better to adopt the view that there is a general simplification going or controlled by mechanical causes and subsidiary to tlie habit and changes in habit of the organism, and which includes these two cross-vetns.

I fear that any one reading the various papers which have appeared during the past year on the Cunea–Congrua–Antigone–Textor controversy would not be very greatly impressed with the lucidity of entomologists. This controversy illustrates remarkably well the difficulty of carrying on a discussion about species or forms whose status is disputed without rendering confusion worse confounded, for the simple reason that different persons use the same name in different senses. For instance, when Dr. Fyles writes of cunea, Drury, he does not mean the insect which Drs. Smith and Dyar understand by the same name, the moth which Harris called the many-spotted ermine moth of the South, Phalæna punctatissima, A. & S., but the individual moth whicir served as Drury's type and which he chooses to believe did not belong to the genus Hyphantria at all, but to have been a Spilosoma, and from this springs much of the misunderstanding which has arisen between these gentlemen.

Though the larvæ and life-histories of several species of the Chrysomelid genus Donacia have been described more or less fully by European entomologists, I have been able to find but one such note in American entomological literature. In 1877 Dr. A. S. Packard gave a brief description of the larva and life-history of Donacia cincticornis, Newm., var. proxima, Kby., in the report of the U. S. Geological Survey for that year (p. 806), together with figures of the larva and cocoon (Pl. LXX., figs. 17–19) which he found on the roots of Nuphar advena.

The following apparently new species of Anaphorinæ have been received since the paper published in Can. Ent., XXXII., 307, was prepared:

Genus Atopocera, Walsingham.

Wals., Proc. Zool. Soc., London, 1897, p. 169.

Lord Walsingham would probably not have proposed this name if he had been aware of the previous use of the masculine form of the same term (Atopocerus, Kraatz, Deut. ent, Zeit., XXXII., 360, 1888. However, the different endings will probably sufficiently distinguish the two genera.

In reference to my previous paper (page 209), Mr. Louis B. Prout kindly draws my attention to the fact that Duponchel, Lep. Ent., March, 1829, also selects didyma as type of Apamea, Ochs., 1816. While it is gratifying that I had come independently to the same conclusion with regard to this type, I cannot follow Duponchel's selection in other cases. I merely state the fact here, reserving details for a later occasion.

It further appears from Mr. Prout's researches that Curtis, who publishes later than Duponchel, viz., in May, 1829, “chooses chrysographa” as type of Apamea.

Neophasia Terlootii was described a great many years ago, and the description being in Latin, it is not surprising that Dr. strecker overlooked it in the hurry to publish his description of the female I sent him, which he supposed had not been previously described. It is a little surprising, however, that Dr. Skinner, who had the first opportunity to examine one of my examples of Terlootii, should have failed to recognize the generic characters of the insect until Dr. Strecker's description as Neophasia epyaxa was published.

Phlepsius lascivius, n. sp.—Resembling altus, slightly larger and lighter coloured; margin of the vertex black either side of a light tip. Length 6 mm.; width 2mm.

Head as wide as the pronotum, vertex depressed at the base, anteriorly convex and rounding to the front, the apex slightly angled, hardly half longer than at eye, two and one-half times wider than long, more than half as long as the pronotum, front broad, convex in both diameters, roundingly narrowing below; clypeus with the margins straight; elytra rather stout and straight, flaring behind, the claval nervures parallel, not united.

Dactylopius Irishi, sp. n.

♀.—Adult dark red, forming a very convex chalk-white ovisac about 3 millim, long and 2½ high, the sacs clustered on the twigs of the plant at the nodes, from two to ten at a node. Eggs and newly-hatched larvæ pale yellow.

Adult ♀, after being boiled and flattened on a slide, nearly circular, about 2 mm. long. The insects do not stain the liquor potassæ on boiling, but the body contains a dull crimson pigment, partly retained in boiled specimens.

Gastrophilus epilepsalis, n. sp.

Larva: Length, 1-12 inch; of the shape shown in the accompanying figure (Fig. 30), with twelve joints besides the head, or thirteen joints; head rounded, with two brown-black hooks, the side view of the cut showing only one of them; head a little longer than broad, rounded; the first incisure with a patch of bristles below the hooks, but not anywhere else; incisures 2 and 3 without bristles; incisures 4 to 12 armed with several rows of minute bristles, all very short except those on 12, pointing backward; joint 13 rounded. Extending back from the hooks and of the same colour, only in places paler, is a marking that seems to be a chitinoid support for the hooks, beneath the cuticle. Colour a dirty yellowish white.

During the past summer I have had the opportunity, through the kindness of Dr. Howard, of working over the unnamed material of the genera Dactylopius, Ripersia, and Phenacoccus, belonging to the collection of the Division of Entomology, U. S., D. A. I wish to record here the identity of D. vastatar, Mask., with D. filamentosus, Ckll., and two species which I believe to be new. I hope in a subsequent paper to give further notes on some of the other species found, and also to record the new host plants found for a number of species.

The summer of 1899 was a remarkable one at Rye in the abundance of Hydrœcia larvæ, as four species, never before noted in their larval state, and which do not seem to have their early histories described, were observed. Old acquaintances were to be found on every side, and some hitherto very uncommon ones were so abundant that a word in the matter of cause and effect may not be amiss. The seasonal conditions are, of course, contributive to such good results; still, the numbers in evidence every year suggest our looking a little further. Briefly, the environments are most propitious for the development of these borers, as that most important question, food supply, can be relied upon being adequate to all demands. The proximity to salt water insures a copious dew-fall, so that vegetation in the months of July and August does not suffer from the usual drought of this season in any such manner as it does farther inland. Here in late midsummer the larger Compositæ and other thick-stemmed plants are in full splendour, while fifty miles back from the coast all may be parched and leafless.