29(5 H AUSTELL ATA. — LEI'IDOTTERA. 



remarkable, so great as to have caused all English writers, who have 

 departed from the Linnean arrangement (in which, however, they 

 are given as two species,) to place them in two genera : Haworth 

 placing the male in Lithosia (after Fabricius), and the female 

 in Crambus ; and Curtis, after me, inserting the former as the 

 type of the genus Melia, a name that necessarily sinks,* and the 

 latter as the only species of Ilythia, after Latreille ; and as there is 

 no objection to this appellation, I shall here adopt it. The males 

 are remarkable by having the palpi concealed in the scales of the 

 front, the base of the antennae being furnished with a long fascicle of 

 hairs on the basal joint, which is very large, the anterior wings being 

 long, narrow, subtruncate, pale at the base, and dark at the apex, 

 with transverse waved dark streaks on the disc; the body rather 

 long : the females, on the contrary, have the palpi (at least the labial 

 ones) very conspicuously elongated, being above thrice as long as the 

 bead, porrected forwards, divaricating a little, and having the termi- 

 nal joint depending : the anterior wings are rather broad, especially 

 behind, with their hinder margin distinctly rounded, and the disc of 

 a greenish hue (during life, fading subsequently) with one or two 

 black dots placed longitudinally ; and on the hinder margin both 

 sexes have a row of black dots, interrupted with white. The larva 

 feeds on the honey collected by Bombi in their cells. 



Sp. 1. sociella. Alis anficis griseis, Unea postica intet^rttpfd nigra, thurace 

 capiteque toto albidis : maris alis anticis basi canis ; fcemine pmiciis uno vel 

 duohiis in medio nigris. (Exp. Alar. 9 lin. — 1 unc. 5 lin.) 



Ph. Ti. sociella. Linni, $. — Me. sociella. Stcph. Catal. ii. 213. No. 7413, $. 

 Ph. Ti. colonella. Linne, 9 . — Donovan, v. viil. pi. 263./. 2, 9. — II. colonella. 

 Steph. Catal. ii. 213. No. 7412, ?. 



Anterior wings griseous, or greenish, with a black line, interrupted by white, 

 on the external hinder margin ; of the male the base is hoary, and the disc 

 is adorned with two very irregularly waved and oblique griseous streaks, 

 the posterior half of the wing being of a reddish-griseous ; iu the female 

 these streaks are less visible, but more angulated, and the wings during life 

 are suffused with a greenish tinge, after death becoming griseous, and bear 

 one elongate black mark on the disc, or occasionally two placed longitudi- 

 nally : the posterior wings are ashy, with a darker margin. 



• Being a Linnean genus of plants, and now sinking into a synonyme with 

 Ilythia of Latreille. 



