Tachina (Exorista) futilis Say., MSS. ♂, ♀. Palpi, antennæ and legs black; face, front and lst abdominal segment with a brassy-yellow reflection. Length, 7–10 mm.

Bottom of the antennal foveæ silvery gray; the lowr part of the cheeks likewise; front, lateral parts of the face and the orbit of the eyes below and behind (genal and occiptial orbit) brassy-yellowish, the coloring of the front being of a more saturate yellow than the lateral parts of the face; above the antennæ, in the middle of the front, a brown stripe, attenuated posteriorly; it bifurcates on the vertex, enclosing the grayish ocellar triangle; the hind plane of the head (occiput) gray. The row of frontal bristles consists; 1st, of three bristles pointing backwards, the uppermost of which is placed on the top of the vertex; 2nd, of three shorter bristles pointing forward; 3rd, of four or five bristles which form diverging rows, descending on both sides of the antennæ, the last being a little below the end of the second antennal joint.

The paper which I have prepared to read upon the genus Colias differs from any that I have consulted up to the present time, in that it treats principally of the habits of the different species during lifetime in the imago state.

During the last ten years giganitc strides have been made by lepidopterologists in breeding the different species of this perplexing family, and their efforts have been crowned with such succes that only a few remain about which nothing is known of the primary stages. It is about the life habits in the prefect state of someof these that I propose to address you, and if my paper does no good, it certainly cannot do any harm, as you will see by the subjoined list of my captures of the different species of Coliadæ that I have a right to express an opinion in this particular direction.

In Papilio, 3, 159, 1883, I described Colias Hagenii as a new species. I related that Mr. T.L. Mead had brought this butterfly from Colorado, in 1871, and that we both were then satisfied that it was not Philodice; that in the summer of 1883; Mr. H. W. Nash, at Pueblo, Col., had sent me some chrysalids of this form, and I noticed that the dorsum was marked by two longitudinal lines, which seemed to indicate sub-dorsal lines in the larva, and which are not present in the larva of Philodice; that I wrote Mr. Nash to observe as to that, and he soon replied that the larvae he then had on hand did show sub-dorsal lines such as are characteristic of many larvae of Eurytheme; that I had been unable to get live eggs from Pueblo subsequently that year, owing to the heat which destroyed them en route, but that Mr. Nash had made observations on the ground, and sent on larvae in alochol which showed broad sub-dorsal bands, that, he said, in life had red running through them.

The species of our insects having near allies in the better known or earlier known European fauna, have called “representative” by the elder Agassiz. And this term would be sufficiently exact and useful did we not associate with it the somewhat metaphysical sense, that these forms were separately created and owe their resemblance to the arbitrary will of the Creator.

I have (Can. Ent., vol, xv.) shown the different structure of the tibiæ in the genera o N. Am. Noctuidœ allied to Homoptera Boisd. But sometime previously I pointed out that this name was used for a section of Hemiptera, and that for this and other reasons we should probably be thrown back upon Pheocyma of Hübner.

The object of this note is to draw attention to a paper printed at Demopolis, Ala., Dec., 1870, in which I endeavored to reply to Mr.Scudder's objections to our determination of Hübner's Plate of calanus. I say: “The chances are against Hübner's having figured both sexes of the ususally unspotted T. inorata with the spotted secondaries of calanus nob.