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Volume 26, Number 4
247
on 22 July. Apparently while Hayden and the surveyors went to occupy their station on Buffalo Peaks, Carpenter and an advance party moved to Twin Lakes. Thus we can be quite sure that the 19 July specimen(s) of Crambus carpenterellus were collected in the vicinity of Weston Pass on the boundary between Park and Lake counties. Good camp could easily be made on the Park County side of the pass. In fact, I camped there myself in the 1930's. It is an area of typical Hudsonian forest, grassland and bog. The region is well shown on U.S.G.S. 7% min. quadrangles Mount Sherman and South Peak.
Faced with selecting one of these three diverse localities as the type locality for carpenter ellus, I reneged and passed the problem to Dr. Klots. He wrote to me "JU1Y 19 is the most logical of the three dates ... for this species to be flying. August 12 is possible, but it would be pretty well gone by then. I think September 8 would be much too late." Thus Dr. Klots settled upon Weston Pass, Park County, Colorado to be the type locality for Crambus carp enter ellus Packard.
Literature Cited
Gannett, H. 1874. Geographical Report of Henry Gannett, M.E., in Hayden, 1874, p. 670-681.
Hayden, F. V. 1874. Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, embracing Colorado, being a report of progress of the exploration for the year 1873. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 718 p. illus.
Osten Sacken, C. R. 1874. Notice on the galls collected by Lieutenant W. L. Carpenter, in Hayden, 1874, p. 567.
Packard, A. S., Jr. 1874. On the geographical distribution of moths in Colorado, in Hayden, 1874, p. 543-560, 15 figs.
Peale, A. C. 1874. Report of A. C. Peale, M.D., geologist of the South Park Division, in Hayden, 1874, p. 193-273, illus.
THE MATURE LARVA OF SPHINX VASHTI (SPHINGIDAE)
Sphinx vashti Strecker is widely distributed in the western half of North America (Hodges 1971, in Dominick et al., The Moths of America North of Mexico, Fascicle 21, Sphingoidea: p. 59-61). The egg, larva, and pupa were first described by Dyar (1894, Psyche 7:177), who reared it on Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus). Recently, Comstock (1966, J. Res. Lepid. 5:218—219) described and figured the egg and first instar larva. The mature larva is depicted here for the first time.
On 14 July 1958 I found a larva feeding on Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) in the front yard of my home in Ottawa, Kansas. The mature larva is pale apple green with blue-green granulations on the dorsum. The lateral oblique lines on the abdomen are lavender or purplish-red. The caudal horn is dark red to deep blue at the tip. In Dyar's specimen the lateral lines were
248
Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society
Fig. 1. Mature larva of Sphinx vashti.
white, edged anteriorly with a narrow black line, and the caudal horn was greenish white; black above, below, and at the tip.
The larva pupated in the soil on 22 July 1958, spent two winters as a pupa (the soil was never moistened), and produced an adult female on 6 May 1960.
This species, single-brooded and always rare in Kansas, has occasionally been taken visiting honeysuckle blossoms in late May and June. I have taken several adults visiting columbines (Aquilegia) in the early evening in Gunnison National Forest, Ohio City, Colorado in mid-July. Fleming (1970, Mich. Entomol. 3:17-23) did not include any feeding records for the adults of Sphinx vashti, but his review was primarily of eastern species.
William H. Howe, 822 East Eleventh St., Ottawa, Kansas 66067.