NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE Vol. XXVH. JUNE 1920. No. I. SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES TO MR. CHARLES OBERTHUR'S FAUNE DES LEPIDOPTERES BE LA BARBARIE, WITH LISTS OF THE SPECIMENS IN THE TRING MUSEUM. {Continued from Vol. XXIV. p. 409 (1917).) By Lord Rothschild, F.R.S., Ph.D. (Plates XIV— XVII.) THE long-expected volume of Mr. Oberthiir's Etudes de Lepidopterologie Comparee, containing the Noctuidae of Algeria, has at last appeared. The date on the wrapper is Octobre 1918, but the volume was only, received in March 1919, so the date of publication for the new names published therein must be taken as 1919. It calls for various remarks. Mr. Oberthiir has adopted Guenee's system of classification of the Noctuidae. Now, although the aim of Science is to establish uniformity of nomenclature and a single classificatory system, it is impossible to forbid the use of any system ; we can only regret, therefore, that such a renowned entomologist as Mr. Oberthiir adopts systems and methods abandoned by the majority of modern workers in Entomology. But while we can only regret this retrograde policy of Mr. Oberthiir, we can and must strongly deprecate the reasons he has and gives for not adopting Sir George Hampson's classification. Whatever other objections Mr. Oberthiir may have to the British Museum classifica-tion, he lays stress on one only, namely he harps upon the rather unfortunate error made by Sir George Hampson in placing Phragmatobia breveti berth, in the genus Maenas. This error has long ago been acknowledged by its author. Mr. Oberthiir makes great capital out of the aquatic habits of certain American species of Maenas as opposed to the desert habitat of bzeveti, quite ignoring the fact that the genus Maenas contains many African and Indo-Malayan species as well as American, and these are, as far as we know, non-aquatic in their habits. Sir George Hampson was misled by the somewhat aberrant neuration of P. breveti, which is almost identical with that of Maenas ; moreover, breveti is not a Tricho-soma as Mr. Oberthiir asserts, but a true Phragmatobia, The abortive wings of the $ are not a generic character, but only specific, as can be seen in the case of Cymbalophora rivularis Men., which has a 9 with abortive wings, while Cymba-lophora pudica Esp. and C. oertzeni Led. have the $ full winged. The aquatic habits of the larva are also only of secondary importance, for in the genus Spilosoma (Diacrisia) we find Spilosoma (Diacrisia) metalhana with a free swimming aquatic larva, while sannio and amurensis, which are very closely allied, 1
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