CLEAR-WING MOTHS OF FAMILY AEGERIIDAE 161 



the body ; a row of blue-black appressed scales at posterior edge of each of 

 segments 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 on dorsum and at the sides; anal tuft short, 

 compressed at the sides, black mixed with orange and red. Coxae of front 

 legs with a broad brush, orange and red ; femora of middle legs and hind- 

 legs clothed with long grayish-white hair ; posterior tibiae rough, orange- 

 brown, slightly mixed with black; tarsi sordid yellow. Wings purplish 

 cupreous. Forewing opaque, streaked with red in the cell and between 

 the veins beyond the black discal mark ; a short red streak also at the base 

 of inner margin ; costa, veins, and broad outer margin violaceous-black ; 

 broad fringes of a lighter tint ; underside with a heavier shading of red, 

 and costa yellow on basal half. Hindwing slightly touched with red ; inner 

 margin red at base ; vitreous on basal half between veins Ic and 2 and 

 partly so in the cell. 



Female. — Labial palpi yellow inwardly and orange outwardly. Head 

 with an orange brush on vertex. Thorax more strongly edged with red 

 and yellow than in the male. Abdomen banded with yellow on segments 

 2, 4, and 6, the band on 4 encircling segment 3 and segment 5 banded with 

 chestnut-red; anal tuft short, blunt, orange, black at the sides. Posterior 

 tibiae deep orange, yellow between the spurs. Wings streaked more con- 

 spicuously with orange and red than in the male ; vitreous areas on basal 

 half of hindwing larger and slightly indicated before the discal mark. 

 Otherwise like the male. 



Expanse: Male 20 to 26 mm., female 20 to 30 mm. 



Distribution. — South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi. 



Type. — Male. In the British Museum of Natural History. 



Remarks. — Described in England in 1856 from examples labeled 

 "United States," this species remained practically unknown until F. M. 

 Jones, of Wilmington, Del., collected a specimen at Freeport, Walton 

 County, Fla., in 1921, and F. E. Watson, of the American Museum of 

 Natural History, captured several in South Carolina. Two females were 

 received from my good friend Thomas S. Van Aller, of Mobile, Ala., in 

 1927, and on subsequent visits to his southern home, 1930 and 1938, the 

 species was collected in numbers. A favorable habitat proved a sandy 

 ridge among pines and oaks at Chickasaw, a suburban district near Mobile. 

 The moths were found in flight or resting on foliage during August and 

 September and were easily captured. Search for the food plant proved 

 far more difficult. Persistent observation connected the insect most in- 

 timately with a plant of the evening-primrose family, Gaura inichauxii. 

 After untold numbers of the flowering stalks of this plant were pulled up 

 without evidence of larval work, a pupal shell protruding at the surface 

 from a silk-lined tube 2 inches long disclosed a deeper, vertical tunnel 

 leading down to the perennial, main root, with a larval burrow extending 

 at least a foot underground. Efforts to connect solituda with a species of 

 Gaura in Colorado have not been successful. 



