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Psyche 1:85, 1874.

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On the Insect Fauna of the White Mountains. Mr. Grote, in an article Lb On the Insect Fauna of the White Mo~mtains," in PSYCHE for last month, writes as follows: L6 On comparing it (Agrotis scropulana, Morr.) with three speci- mens of Pachnobia carnea, Thunb., from Labrador, it seems to me probable that a larger series may show that the species are the same," and " I have a single specimen (of Agrotis opipara, Morr.) from the White Mountains, of which my determination is not absolute, but I believe it to be the species, since it came from Mr. Morrison, though unnamed. If so, I think we have to do with A. islandica."
In making synonymical corrections, we want certainties, not probabilities, and it is '' obviously unsafe " to make or to insin- uate such corrections on the scanty and doubtfully determined material, which Mr. Grote states he possesses. I will mention that the four species named are entirely distinct from each other ; and that, in working on my paper on the genus Agrotis, my material of them consisted of thirty Pachnobia carnea, from Labrador, and one from the White Mountains, bred by myself; six specimens each of Agrotis scropulana and opipara, all bred from the larvae ; and three specimens of Agrotis islandica, lent me by Dr. Packard.
In Pachnobia carnea there is no basal black dash, and the reniform spot is obsolete ; in Agrotis scropdana the basal dash is very large, black and distinct, and the claviform spot is long, clear ell ow and conspicuous ; in the former the interior line is oblique and outwardly undulate, in the latter it is very strongly drawn in, sometimes touching the basal dash. Agrotis islandica and opipara do not bear any resemblance to each other; the gound color is entirely different; the former is a dull gray inconspicuous species, with fine and interrupted mark- ings, the latter is entirely cinereous, with distinct heavy black markings. I do not think it necessary to give other points of difference, as those pointed out above are amply sufficient to separate the insects.
B. K Morrison.




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