274 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



edged with zigzag dark brown lines, and there are also two or 

 three short irregular brown lines running backwards from the front 

 edge of the fore-wings, besides a minute pale crescent, edged with 

 dark brown, near the middle of the same. In the females the pale 

 bands and dark lines are sometimes wanting, the wings being 

 almost entirely of a red-brown color. It expands from one inch 

 and a half to nearly two inches. Mr. Abbot, who has figured it, 

 states that the caterpillar lives on the oak and the ash, that it spun 

 itself up in May among the leaves in a gray-brown cocoon, in 

 which the chrysalis was enveloped with a pale brown powder, and 

 that the moth came out in February. My specimens, on the 

 contrary, as above stated, were found on apple-trees, made their 

 cocoons in the autumn, and appeared in the winged form in the 

 early part of the following summer. 



The foregoing is the only American lappet-moth, with notched 

 wings, which is known to me ; but we have another much larger 

 one, with entire wings. It is the Velleda of Stoll, so named 

 after a celebrated German female, commemorated by the ancient 

 historian Tacitus. This moth has a very large, thick, and woolly 

 body, and is of a white color, variegated or clouded with blue- 

 gray. On the fore-wings are two broad dark gray bands, inter- 

 vening between three narrow wavy white bands, the latter being 

 marked by an irregular gray line ; the veins are white, prominent, 

 and very distinct ; the hind-wings are gray, with a white hind 

 border, on which are two interrupted gray lines, and across the 

 middle there is a broad, faint, whitish band ; on the top of the 

 thorax is an oblong blackish spot, widening behind, and consisting 

 of long black and pearl colored erect scales, shaped somewhat 

 like the handle of a spoon. There is a great disparity in the 

 size of the sexes, the males measuring only from one inch and a 

 half to one inch and three quarters across the wings, while the 

 females expand from two and a quarter, to two inches and three 

 quarters or more. The caterpillar of this fine moth I have never 

 seen alive ; but one was sent to me, in the autumn of 1828, by the 

 late T. G. Fessenden, Esq., who received it from Newburyport, 

 from a correspondent, by whom it was found on the fifth of Au- 

 gust, sticking so fast to the limb of an apple-tree, that at first it 



