Editor Can. Ent.:

Dear Sir,—I send you herewith certain notes of observations made 50 years ago, by the eminent naturalist, Philip H, Gosse, F. R. S., &c., on Butterflies of Newfoundland.

I received a letter from Mr. Gosse, in the spring of 1882, from which I extract as follows:

“I began the study of Insects in 1832, when I was a clerk in a mercantile house at Carbonear, Newfoundland. For more than three years I pursued the study with great ardor and industry, making careful drawings of nearly every species I found, of all orders, often magnified. These drawings, in a small 4to book, I still possess, and for minute care I think they are in nowise inferior to any that I have executed in later years.

Catocala Coelebs Gr.

The fore wings are black with a grayish white subterminal shade. A strongly marked variety of Badia with the fore wings brown, was mistaken for Coelebs by Mr. Strecker, and was the occasion of its reference to Badia. But a sight of many specimens leads me to believe that the true C. Coelebs, with black fore wings, grades into Badia, and is only to be regarded as a variety of it. But this could not have been predicated of the type. The two extremes are exceedingly distinct and different looking.

Exenterella Grote.

I propose this generic term for Exentera Gr.; preoccupied in Insecta. Now that we have Mr. Scudder's work on genera, there will be more certainty about generic names. I notice that Rhododipsa is not included in Mr. Scudder's list. In speaking of the omissions in my review of it, I did not intend that any idea of purposed favoritism should be conveyed by my words. I merely regretted that some authors should have been so fully and others so sparingly represented. Had the proof of my paper been sent to me, I think I should have changed the wording to a simple expression of this regret.

Form slender; vestiture scaly; clypeus rough, with a superior arched ridge, infra-clypeal plate prominent; wings very wide, entire; apex determinate; external margin regularly rounded. Labial palpi short. Legs slender and apparently unarmed. Eyes naked, unlashed. Abdomen hardly exceeding secondaries. Body untufted on the dorsal line. The type and only species is snow white, with a large, golden, metallic, trigonate, median patch on primaries above, leaving of median vein and a reddish stain near the base of the wing.

1. Poetica Gr. Arizona.

This is one of the prettiest moths allied to Plusia in our fauna.

This paper is the result of my studies upon Mr. Neumoegen's collection, commenced last autumn, but interrupted and delayed by my bad health.

In order to make the following list as complete as possible, I have included the species in the cabinets of Messrs. H. H. Lyman and F. B. Caulfield, of Montreal, with those in my own collection, taken at Quebec, and also those credited to Mr. Belanger, of Quebec, in Packard's “Monograph.” When a species is found both at Quebec and Montreal, no locality is given; when found only at either place, Quebec is indicated by a “Q,” Montreal by an “M.” The list comprises 115 species and 3 varieties. The names and arrangement are those of Packard's “Monograph.”

My first Solpuga was found under a clod of hard earth, which I overturned in search of spiders. Upon being uncovered, it reared its palpi aloft with a menacing motion, and backing down as closely as possible into a little depression, stood motionless till captured. This was in August, 1882. The specimen is apparently a ♀, Datrines constricta, of medium size. The head and mandibles conform closely to the figure of that species, but it differs materially from the letter-press description of Constricta; as to the other parts.

Yrias Volucris, n. s.

♂. Allied to Repentis, the lines having the same general course, but they are brown, not balck, and the ground color is darker. The space included by the discal rounding of the t. p. line is not so large. The reniform shows a black included streak and the black costal dots on median space are as in its ally. the angles of the t. a. line are less sharp. There is a minute apical balck mark on the margin, before which a paler shade, an approximation to the ocellate mark of Clientis. On hind wings the distinct black mesial line is wanting. Beneath the wings are paler at base and the lines very faint. Expanse 26 mil. Arizona. B. Neumoegen, Esq.

Egg.—Sub-rotund, broadest at base, and there flattened; surface slightly rough, but without definite markings under a pretty high power; color greenish-white. Duration of this stage about 7 days.

Young Larva.—Length just from egg, .09 inch; color yellow-white; but in a few hours changes to pale green; shape cylindrical, long, slender; the last segment bluntly bifurcated; on each segment a few tubercles, each of which gives out a clubbed white hair; head, at first, nearly twice as broad as 2, obovoid, truncated and depressed; on each vertex a small rounded prominence, indented at top, and from the middle of the hollow rises a little tubercle, with a bristle; color light brown; the surface shallowly pitted, and sparsely pilose; ocelli reddish brown.

For my part, I am very glad that a plate of tibial structure has at last been published, and by Mr. Smith. It illustrates characters upon which I have long insisted, and is a valuable addition to the present “Synopsis.” The second plate might well have been omitted; it hardly assists the student, and is badly drawn. The “Synopsis” itself is a gratification to me; it is scientifically written so far as the characters it discusses are concerned. Its difference from my own work in its conclusions are more apparent than real. Mr. Smith writes with a critical eye to my shortcomings, and really finds very little to say. He quotes at some length a former statement of mine as to the spinose tibiæ (made ten years ago), which I at once corrected on examining again the small insect under a larger lens. But he excuses other modern writers with worse mistakes to father. In stating the case fairly, he should have said that although Mr. Grote has been the first American to insist on the natural characters of spinose tibiæ, yet once he called the tibiæ unarmed, where they were really spinose, but he promptly corrected the mistake.

1. Contrary to my expectation, the Asiatic forms of the Comma group are not so near the American as are the European. Dr. Speyer tells us that the former vary from typical Comma in a different direction from the latter. If the American are derived from the European, or the reverse, the Asiatic ought to lie between the two, apparently.

2. I am satisfied that Juba should rank as a species. Dr. Speyer gives sufficient reasons for this, and examination of many examples confirm this view. I have a beautiful variety of Juba (male) sent me by Prof. Snow, and taken by him at Los Vegas, N. M., iu 1882. The upper side is darker—more fuscous and less fulvous—than any other example I have seen, and secondaries beneath and the apical area of primaries are densely dusted with golden-green; the spots white and somewhat smaller than in the type. I call this vat. Viridis.

In the mouth of April, 1880, I cut down a willow tree and cut it up into “sled-lengths,” when no traces of borers could be seen. Early in March of the following year, while cutting this wood for the stove, I found it to be infested with the larvæ of some species of longicorn beetle; I placed some of the sticks in one of my breeding cages where it remained undisturbed until the 7th of May following, when I found that nearly all the larvæ had assumed the pupa form. The next examination was made two weeks later, when nothing but perfect beetles were found. From this it would seem that this species requires only one year to complete its transformations.

Tabanus Allynii. Length 15 mm.

Female.—Eyes naked, no ocelligerous tubercle. Front yellowishgray; callosity chestnut, nearly square, with an unconnected, spindleshaped line above. Face and cheeks yellowish-gray. Antennæ reddishyellow, annulate portion black. Palpi yellowish with white hairs. Thorax and scutellum grayish-black with minute golden-yellow pubescence; humerus reddish-brown when denuded; pleurae and pectus grayish with white or yellow hairs. Abdomen yellow, segments 4–7 black with yellow hind margins, which are expanded into triangles on the middle of segments 4 and 5; first segment black under the scutellum; second segment with a black triangle on the middle, and the third segment with a dark spot on each side of the middle. Venter yellow with a black line through the middle and tip dark. Legs—femora balck, yellow at the tips; tibiae yellow, darker at the tips; outer half of front tibia black; tarsi brownish, front ones black. Wings hyaline; stigma yellowish.

This singularly interesting larva occurs in abundance in the rapids of the Niagara above the Falls. The writer has taken it in other rapid streams in Western New York, also at different places in Michigan; besides, its occurrence in widely separated localities has been recorded by observers, hence we are led to believe that it is distributed throughout Eastern North America. Dr. Leconte has described another species, Ps. haldemanni, from the peninsula of California; its larva, it seems, has not been described.

The first notice of our larva is that by Dr. Kay in Part VI. (Crustacea), page 53, Zoology of New York, 1844. It is described in that work as a new genus and species of Crustacea, under the name Fluvicola Herricki; a poor figure is given.

1834, July 25.—A friend, A. E., caught for me an example of the Black Swallowtail, in torn condition, on Carbonear Island, a high rocky islet, about a mile in length, lying off the mouth of the harbor, uninhabited, uncultivated, partly covered with bushes—visited occasionally for summer picnics. This is my first cabinet specimen; but I had possessed an old rubbed and patched specimen which had been captured in the same locality several years before I began to collect.

Among a number of cocoons of the family of Bombycidæ collected on Long Island this autumn, I have one of P. cecropia of light weight. As the examination of this cocoon revealed conditions unknown to me, I have thought it desirable to make a record for your invaluable journal. The absence of the loose silk of a reddish hue which characterizes the appearance of the new made cocoon, indicated that it was a manufacture of the previous year. On opening it I found within a cocoon of O. macrurum, the parasite that commonly attacks the Potyphemus caterpillar. The parasite had emerged from its cocoon, as evidenced by the usual lid opening at one end, and had escaped into the outer air through the open passage that exists in the cocoon of the moth.

Thecla Wittfeldii.

Male—Expands 1.5 inch.

Upper side black-brown; primaries have a large oval stigma; secondaries have the edge of hind margin on posterior half pale metallic blue; a large fulvous spot in second median interspace over a black spot on the margin; two tails, the posterior one very long, measuring .24 inch on anterior side, the other .1 inch; black, tipped with white; fringes of primaries fuscous, of secondaries same to upper median nervule, then white, and next anal angle, long, brown, with a whitish line running through them.

The family Thripidæ, though possessing many characters of peculiar interest, and being of no little importance economically, has received but very little attention from American Entomologists, either systematic or economic. With the exception of a few notes upon their habits, and descriptions of some four or five species by Dr. Fitch, and also a few notes by Mr. Walsh and Prof. Riley, concerning their food habits, scarcely anything has been written of our native species.

Without going into a discussion of the classification of the group, or the peculiar characters which seem to ally it to different orders, it will be sufficient here to state that the wings are entirely membranous and folded flat upon the back, which, with the general conformation of the body, would seem to place it with the Homopterous division of the Hemiptera. The mouth parts, however, are free, composed of both mandibles and maxillæ, and the maxillæ and labium are palpigerous—characters very diverse from those of the group just mentioned.

Upper side dark fulvous, the base of primalies largely black, of secondaries still more, the black area extending to middle of disk, effacing all markings; the spots of both wings outside the basal area as in Chariclea, but the narrow spots on primaries are unusually large, with ragged edges, and the mesial band is heavy and diffused; on secondaries this band is lost in the black ground.

Under side of primaries nearly as in Chariclea, but there is scarcely any yellow at apex or along hind margin, all this area being deep red; a few yellow scales only at apex and in middle of the marginal interspaces, to represent the spots and patches of Chariclea; the submarginal lunules almost lost in the red ground.