Article beginning on page 491.
Psyche 6:491, 1891.

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PSYCHE.
A CABBAGE-LIKE CECIDOMYIIDOUS
GALL ON BIGELOVIA.
BY C. H. TYLER TOWUSEND,
KINGSTON, JAMAICA.
On June 21, 1892, asmallbud-like gall was found on BigeZovia graveolens.
It was quite
abundant a few miles to the eabt of Gallo Spring, N. Mex. There were also found next day, June 22, west of Apache Spring.
Gall.-Length, 5 to 84 mm. ; greatest basal width, 4 to 7 mm. Small, bud-like, borne on sides of stems, to which the gall is attached by a very constricted base almost without length; formed of loosely overlapping stip- ules much like the cabbage gall on willow but not conical or compact. Greenish in
color, or slightly yellowish, scantily covered with a fine white woolly pubescence. Stip- ules forming the gall rather broad at base, pointed at end or sometimes rounded, from 12 to 20 in number, but not more than 8 or 10 showing on the outside, the tips of the rest joined and forming the terminal central tip of the gall. Inside the innermost of these, in a little slightly hardened cell, a single larva or pupa is found. Stipules with the woolly
pubescence on the outer convex surface and on the edges, nearly or quite bare on the inner concave surface. The central pupal cell is thinly lined with the white woolly pubescence, and is about 3 mm. long, by 12 mm. wide.
Described from 8 or g galls.
This species,
which is with hardly a doubt new, may be call ed Cecido~nyia bigdoviae-brassicoides. Mr. T. D. A. Cockerel1 records, on page
106 of vol. vi, West American Sci., the breed- ing of a cecidomyian from the galls of the trypetid Eurosfa bigel~viae. Ifbred from the trypetid galls, it can hardly be the same as this species. He proposes the name C. higeloviae for it, but without description of either gall or insect.
THE CLICK OF AGERONIA.-In a paper
on stridulation in certain Lepidoptera pub- lished by the Zoological society of London Mr. G. F. Hampson gives the first reasonable explanation of the clicking sound produced by Ageronia. He says : " On detaching and clearing a fore wing of Ageronia arethusa, I found there was a small pyriform membran- ous sac attached to the base of the inner mar- gin of the fore wing, open anteriorly, and with a pair of curved chitinous hooks with spatulate extremities lying freely in front of it. It was obvious that this could not come into contact with any of the nervures of the hind wing, and that no structure attached to the hind wing could act on it; and as there seemed to be a projection on the thorax in the immediate neighborhood, I cleared and denuded of scales a half insect with the wings still attached to the thorax, and could then see cinder a low power of the microscope that there was a pair of strong chitinous hooks attached to the thorax and that when the fore wing was moved up and down the spatulate ends of the chitinous hooks attached to the wing played against these, being released when the wing reached a certain angle, and I suggest that this is the cause ofthe clicking sound, the hooks acting as a tuning fork and the membranous sac as a sounding
board." We owe to the favor of the Zoolog- ical society the opportunity to reproduce here his cut illustrative of the mechanism involved.
EARLY APPEARANCE OF ANOSIA PLEXIP-
pus.-On two very warm days in the early
part of May, May 11 and 12, Mr. S. W. Den-



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PSYCHE.
ton saw close at hand a faded but otherwise perfect female of Anosia $lexi$$us in the garden of Mr. William Brewster of Cam-
bridge, Mass. It remained for some time
about the garden apparently searching for the food plant. This must have been a
hibernator and it would seem scarcely possi- ble that it could already have flown from so great a distance as the extreme southern states, but must have passed the winter in some locality somewhat further north. It will be recollected moreover that our last winter was unusually severe.
5'. H. S.
ATROPHARISTA JURINOIDES. - Professor
Townsend mistakes my note in Psyche.
I did
not mean to criticize him for making a
synonym -my own house is too vitreous to warrant the free use of such missiles. But he should not be so reluctant to admit in type what he does in iitte~ts, that he had overlooked Melanophrys. I was in error in regard to the types : Mr. Aldrich tells me that the spe- cimens in his collection which I examined were ones that he had compared with the
types. All that I intended in the article re- ferred to was a protest against the indis- criminate use of some of the characters upon which have been founded the hosts of new genera in this family within the past three or four years. S. W. Williston.
Lawrence, Kansas, May 5, 1893.
,
NOTE ON DR. WILLISTON'S CRITICISMS.-
In his article in the March, 1893, number of Psyche, Professor Williston does me an injustice. My recent table of tachinidae contains all the genera in Brauer and von Bergenstamm's part i, which are referred by these authors to North America except several which are neither figured nor recognizably described, or else are insufficiently separated from the older genera. None of those in part ii are included, for the reason that not a single one of them is figured, a d most of them are extremely difficult to recognize, even with that patient study and ample mate- rial commended by Professor Williston. I do not believe that, in the unbiased entomo- logical mind, genera erected in such fashion can stand. As to the figures that are pub- lished, and those in part i only, they are with almost no exception heads alone, excel- lent certainly, but usually there is no clew in the text to the venation. I contend that no amount of patient study and ample material is going to solve such problems satisfactorily. I do not accept Professor Williston's proposi- tion that "figures are usually more valuable in this family than extended descriptions." The best of figures are always more or less misleading, and cannot be unflinchingly
relied upon. Full and complete descrip-
tions, conscientiously made, are of more value than any number of figures, since they contain information in such a form that it cannot be perverted or misinterpreted, either in the process of publication or afterwards. As to "multiplication of genera," this is the chief fault of the authors upheld, their next fault being the insufficient characterization of those multiplied. It is with the greatest reluctance that I have again referred to the work of these authors, in this particular. I do not "sweepingly condemn" this work. I have great faith in the validity of most of the characters employed by them, though I would not attach the same importance to all. Their figures are unexcelled if equalled, so far as they go. Their descriptions, not their system, are splendid, so far as they go ! C. H. Tyler Townsend.
Mar. 12, 1893.
ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTES.- A notable con-
tribution to insect embryology by W. M.
Wheeler appears in the last number of the Journal of morphology. The original por- tions of it relate chiefly to
Orthoptera and
indeed to Locustidae, but the author has in- vestigated many other types including in all some thirty species. Sixty-one figures on the plates represent Xiphidium, Stagmomantis and Gryllus. Seventeen figures in the text are mostly diagrammatic.




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