Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 15.djvu/59

A peculiar and very elegant species, not nearly allied to any other, and immediately recognizable by the ferruginous longitudinal streaks; it has more the general appearance of some of the Phycidæ, but it is a true Crambus.

Two specimens taken by Mr. R. W. Fereday in March near Lake Coleridge.

The Tortricina of New Zealand are less numerous than at first sight they appear to be, or than would be inferred from a study of authors. Walker described 40 species, but after the removal of synonyms, and unidentifiable descriptions of which the types have been lost, these are reducible to 12. Zeller has added one new species. Felder has described 9, out of which (excluding Pædisca mahiana, which is unknown to me, but perhaps not a New Zealand species) only one is new. Butler has, also, described 7, of which only two are new. I have previously described 9 others, and now give descriptions of 11 additional species, which, with two naturalized European insects, bring up the entire number to only 38.

I have been led by a fuller acquaintance with the New Zealand species, which are presumably in the main of old types, to modify the views expressed in my paper on the Australian Tortricina (Proc. Linn. Soc. of New South Wales, 1881) as to the process of development of the Tortricidæ. The genus Harmologa and the additional species of Proselena furnish so strong a connecting link between their own group (or that of Acropolitis), and that of Tortrix and Cacoecia, that I see no other way of accounting for it, except on the supposition that this group is the oldest of the three principal ones, and that the groups of Dichelia, on the one hand, and of Tortrix, on the other, both sprang from it in diverging lines. The genus Prothelymna further supplies the nearest approach known to me in these regions towards the type from which this oldest group must have arisen. It is impossible to arrange a linear order so as to clearly show these relations, but I think them quite apparent. The history of the special distinguishing character of the Acropolitis group, the separation at origin of veins 3 and 4 of the hindwings, is thus satisfactorily made out; the group originates from the Chimabacchidæ, a small family specially characterized by this same structure, but in the Depressaridæ and Œcophoridæ, which are very extensive families, and the parents of the Chimabacchidæ, this character is entirely absent; the tendency to reversion in this particular has evidently been very strong, since in all three families of the Tortricina the character has disappeared from all but the oldest types. So marked is this result,