WILD SILKWORMS. 97 



cherry. The cocoon is only a small one, much like that of 

 Cynthia, and is enfolded in the leaves of the food-plant. 



A type utterly unlike anything we have hitherto noticed is to be 

 found in the genus Actias. For delicacy of tint and beauty of 

 form, these insects certainly carry oft the palm. They are 

 entirely of the most lovely pale green, and the hind wings are 

 provided with a long tail, which 'somehow or other, in a Lepidop- 

 terous insect, always seems to give an air of refinement and 

 aristocratic breeding. As a relief to the pale green ground 

 colour, and in exquisite contrast to it, is a streak along the front 

 edge of the fore wings and running right across the thorax as well, 

 which commencing as black on the outer edge, passes by insen- 

 sible gradations through shades of red to pure white, where it 

 adjoins the general ground colour. The " eyes " are in the form 

 of a dark crescent on the side nearest the base of the wing, with 

 the rest of the circle filled in with whitish. 



Actias Selene is a native of India, and has been reared in this 

 country on walnut, nut, wild cherry, wild pear, etc. There is a 

 very similar but smaller species found in the United States, and 

 called Actias Luna (Fig. 35) ; the specific names of both insects 

 have reference to the crescentric marks which are the most con- 

 spicuous adornments of the wings, and strike the observer at first 

 sight; " selene ' being the Greek, as "luna" is the Latin, for 

 the " moon." The caterpillar of Selene is an odd-looking crea- 

 ture with the dividing lines of the segments deeply impressed. 

 When young it is dark red, but afterwards green, with a pale 

 streak at the side, and with a number of red warts. It forms a 

 large, rather flexible, dark brown cocoon. The American species 

 feeds on walnut, nut, and other trees, and is easy to rear, but its 

 cocoon is so thin, and the fibre so weak, that it is not likely to be 

 of any use as a silk producer. The caterpillar (Fig. 36), unlike 

 that of its Indian relative, is green all its life. 



There is yet another type of these silk-producing Saturnidce 

 that we must mention. It is represented by an Indian species 

 called Cricula trifenestrata. This is not a large insect, and in all 

 its stages it can easily be distinguished from any of the foregoing. 

 The moth is brownish yellow, with nothing peculiar about the 

 shape of the wings save that the fore pair of the male are much 

 hooked at the tip. But the distinctive feature is that, instead of 

 having, as so many others of the family have, one large " window ' 

 on each wing, it carries a row of three tiny ones on each fore wing,, 

 and a single minute one on each hind wing. It is from this peculiar- 

 ity that it has derived the name "trifenestrata," or "three- 

 windowed." The caterpillar is rather hairy, and the cocoon is a 



