Article beginning on page 221.
Psyche 6:221, 1891.

Full text (searchable PDF)
Durable link: http://psyche.entclub.org/6/6-221.html

The following unprocessed text is extracted from the PDF file, and is likely to be both incomplete and full of errors. Please consult the PDF file for the complete article.

February 18ga.l
abont twice as long as second, moderately wide, rounded at apex; arista blackish, thick- ened on basal fourth, plumose on basal half, 3-jointed, second joint short; proboscis not so long as height of head, fleshy, dark brown or blackish, with well developed labella; palpi nearly black, moderately long, stout at tip, clothed with a few small bristles long- est on the underside ; occiput cinereous, clothed with black hairs and fringed with black bristles.
Thorax cinereous, with three
well defined black vittae reaching scutellum, and with moderately strong macrochaetae; scutellum cinereous, with an apical decus- sate pair of macrochaetae overreaching base of third abdominal segment, a shorter lateral pair, and a weak sub-discal pair.
Abdomen
black, more or less heavily shaded with sil- very or cinereous, in some places with a golden shade, first segment not shortened; first segment without macrochaetae, second segment with a lateral one; third segment with a median marginal pair and a lateral pair, anal segment with a marginal row of six or eight macrochaetae ; anus slightly rufous.
Legs blackish, femora more or less
cinereous especially front ones ; tibiae more or less spiny, especially middle pair; claws and pulvilli short.
Wings longer than ab-
domen, grayish hyaline, with very small
costal spine, first vein spined half its length, second spined to small cross-vein ; apical cell opening before tip of wing, fourth vein bent at right angle, with wrinkle at bend, apical cross-vein bowed in; hind cross-vein oblique, nearer to bend of fourth vein; tegulae nearly white, halteres blackish.
Length of body 5 mm ; of wing 4 mm.
Described from one specimen. Ohio.
Sept.
-
We seem among old friends in the twelfth part of Edwards'~ Butterflies of North Ameri- ica, which appeared early in January; for the early stages figured are of species, Papilio soizcaon and Chionobas uhle~i, very similar to those whose histories have been before il- lustrated, while the additional figures of but- terflies are of other forms of the same genera, P. americus and C. varuna. In both the
species of which the, life-history is told, there are interesting features. In P. zolicaon the spring butterflies are found to be from win- tering chrysalids of all three of the broods of the previous season; it would be instruc- tive to learn in what proportions the first and second broods are represented, and
whether any of the chrysalids of the first brood disclose their inmates at the season of the third. In C. uhleri breeding and field observations together show the species to be in part double, in part single brooded, and the exact statistics given are very valuable, since the behavior of the species of this genus is very irregular and incongruous, and every new fact helps toward a solution of difficulties elsewhere. It is needless but pleasant to add that the same abundance, one might almost say luxury, of illustration is employed as heretofore, and it is of mar- vellous delicacy and truthfulness.
Mr. Edwards would render his plates sim- pler if instead of employing the letters of the alphabet for the different illustrations of the early stages, without uniformity, he would always use some specific and invariable des- ignation, as I, 11, or Z', P, for the different larval stages. Any one can tell at a glance an egg from a caterpillar or a chrysalis, but when the earlier larval stages are magnified, it requires much comparison of letters with legend to ascertain which stage of the cater- pillar is presented in particular cases; whereas if figures (I, 2, etc.) either by them- selves or in connection with the letter / were used, no such reference would be needed, and comparisons could be more readily
made. It would also be simpler if in his text he would employ the terms "1st stage," "zd stage," etc., or some equivalent term in- stead of "young larva," "after 1st moult,' etc., neither of which is really definite



================================================================================

PSYCHE.
[February 1892
though in the latter one would of course sup- ply in the mind the missing "and before
zd" needed to make it definite.
DRYOCAMPA RIVERSII Behr, - The name
of this species has been omitted from Prof. Smith's new list of lepidoptera of boreal America, but no harm has been done thereby as it must be referred to the synonymy. I have seen three specimens by the kindness of Prof. Rivers and of Dr. Behr. The fol- lowing is the synonymy and bibliography : OEDEMASIA SALICIS Hy. Edw.
1876. Hy. Edw., Proc. Cal. acad. sci.,
v. 7, 12 I, Heterocam$a.
1882. Grote, Check list Bomb. No. 238 1-2, Oedemasia.
1891. Dyar, Psyche, v. 6, 177.
1891. Smith, List lep. No. 1303, riversii Behr.
1889. Behr, Proc. Cal. acad. sci., 2nd ser., v. 2,94, Dryocam'pa.
Dr. Behr adds walnut (Juglans) to the
already known food plants of this species. Harrison G. Dyar.
---
RECENT LITERATURE.-The eighth part of
Buckton's British Cicadae has now appeared completing the work, which extends to two octavo volumes with over four hundred pages and eighty-two plates. 239 species are de- scribed, referred to 49 genera. The final part contains some matters of general interest, over fifty concluding pages being given up to some special sections : one on the sterilization of Tettigidae is based principally on Giard's papers on "castration parasitaire"; another on the pygofer, with a plate, treats of the male abdominal appendages with special ref- erence to sharp's observations; a third on fossil Tettigidae, with two plates, is based on the studies of Heer, Westwood, Scudder, and Germar and Berendt; and these are fol. lowed by a general summary, with sections on mounting and preserving and on Tettix found on classic coins, illustrated by a plate. An index is given to each volume, but if there had been added a special table of con- tents combined with a systematic list of genera, it would have made it more useful and the heads of the separate essays now scattered through the book would have been brought together.
In a recent paper in the Zoologischer
anzeiger on the chronological succession of wing colors in chrysalids of butterflies, Urech claims that the Vanessas must have been originally white ! White, yellow, red, brown, black, he finds to be the order in which the colors appear, starting from an originally completely white area. His
studies, however, have been too limited to draw such sweeping conclusions, though
their interest and perhaps their importance cannot be denied.
Dittrich reports in the Zeitschrift fur en- tomologie of Breslau for 1891, p. 21, a cyclo- pean honey-bee sent him by a school-master in St. Petersburg, one of whose pupils
brought 'it to him saying : "the rascal al- ways flew head downwards !" The only part misshapen was the head whose length ex-
ceeded its breadth by one-third. Viewed
from the front, a single crescentic compound eye was situated at the upper margin of the head, reaching on either side nearly to the mandibles, without trace of any emargina- tion at the middle line of the head, as one would expect, to indicate the fusion of two eyes. The ocelli were absent.
On further inquiry of the school-master, Herr Hans, the latter stated that he once found a number of such examples in young bees which fell to the ground and repeatedly tried to rise without being able to mount more than half a metre; he had found as
many as a hundred in a day; all were born of one mother. The same thing began to be repeated the following year in the brood of the same parent, so that he killed the ex- traordinary mother. He adds "the daugh-
ter of this mother has so far given birth to very few such monsters." Here, surely, is a chance for some Weismannian experiments.



================================================================================