320 LEPIDOPTERA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



9. P. venosa Scudder. Pr. Bost. Soc. N. H. VIII, Sept. 1861, 181. 



Above, white tinted with very pale greenish-yellow; base of all 

 the wings black, and costal border of primaries with a black band, 

 extending about half its length ; extremities of upper nervules of 

 primaries broadly margined with black scales, with a spot of the 

 same color in the middle of the space between first and second 

 inferior nervules; a black dot at the tips of the nervules of second- 

 aries. The female differs from the male in having nearly all the 

 nervures on upper side of primaries somewhat bordered with gray- 

 ish scales, and the extremities of the lower nervules almost equally 

 with the upper ; but most characteristically by the presence of a 

 band of grayish scales along the posterior border of primaries, 

 which is bent abruptly upwards in the direction of the spot in the 

 space between first and second inferior nervules, and continues to 

 third inferior nervule, sometimes interrupted at the angle. 



Beneath, as in the darker forms of P. oleracea, with the ground 

 color slightly more highly colored than the upper surface, the ner- 

 vures of the secondaries being heavily, and those of the primaries 

 more narrowly bordered with grayish scales, with a saffron-colored 

 spot at base of costa of secondaries. 



Antenna? black, with incomplete white annulations interrupted 

 above ; tip of club yellowish ; body black, with whitish hairs be- 

 neath ; the wings expand from 1.75 to 2 inches. 



I have examined twenty specimens (5 9, 15 J 1 ), brought to the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology by Mr. Alexis Agassiz, from 

 San Mateo and Mendocino City, California. 



[Doubleday in his Gen. Diurn. Lep. states that P. callidice Godt. is 

 found among the Rocky Mountains ; Boisduval, in his Lep. de la Cali- 

 fornie, enumerates P. leucodice Eversmann among them, remarking that 

 his specimens "do not difl'er from individuals from Altai ;" and lastly, 

 Menetries, in his St. Petersburg Catalogue, gives P. autodice Hiibn. as an 

 inhabitant of California. Since no description has been given in any of 

 these cases, and the insects themselves are so closely allied, one can 

 scarcely doubt that these entomologists had before them specimens of the 

 same Californian species. Among the large number of species from the 

 Pacific coast, which I have examined, I have never seen anything ap- 

 proaching near enough to either of these to warrant the positive assertion 

 that it was the species referred to by them. P. venosa is the most nearly 

 allied for which I cannot but think they have mistaken it, sad as the blunder 

 may be. P. callidice, leucodice, and autodice are represented by P. proto- 

 dice, belonging to an entirely different section of the genus from P. venosa.] 



SCUDDEK. 



