38 HAUSTELLATA. LEPIDOPTERA. 



Claterpillar gregarious, and black when young, afterwards green, annulated witli 

 blackj witli verticillated hairy red and yellow warts on the black band : it is 

 found on heath (Erica vulgaris), blackthorn, alder, oak, bramble, rose, elder, 

 willow, birch, strawberry, fruit-trees, whortleberry (Faccinium MyrtiUus), 

 Ike. during the autumn, and constructs a hard pyriform cocoon, covered with 

 a fuscous down, in which they change to pupse, which emerge in April, 

 though sometimes they remain two seasons in that state : the pupa is brown, 

 and very obtuse. 



Common in several places near London ; in the hollow of Coombe- 

 wood ; at Hertford, Ripley, &c. " Not unfrequent in Horningsea 

 and Swaffham fens."" — Rev. L. Jenyns. " On heath, near Netley, 

 Salop, very common." — Kev. F. W. Hope. " Common in Plaistow- 

 marshes in August last." — A. Cooper^ Esq. " Abundant on heaths, 

 near Scarborough." — Mr. Williamson. " Near Manchester, but ap- 

 parently rare till recently, when numbers of males were captured 

 by taking the opposite sex into the fields." — T. Marshall, Esq. 



Genus L. — Lasiocampa*, Schrank. 



Palpi minute, short, porrected, very hairy, triarticulate ; basal joints of equal 

 length; terminal joint minute, ovate: maxillw obsolete. Antennw straight, 

 deeply bipectinated in the males to the apex, serrated in the females : head 

 small : thorax robust : abdomen, moderate, tufted, somewhat cleft at the apex, 

 in the males; robust, and scarcely tufted, in the females: wings entire, 

 rounded, deflexed, and slightly reversed during repose : cilia distinct. Larva 

 cylindrical and hairy, curls up when disturbed : pupa obtuse, enclosed in an 

 egg-shaped cocoon of firm consistence ; or an elongate dense folliculus. 



The texture, integrity, and comparative elongation of the wings 



* The vastness of entomological science renders it replete with difficulties, 

 when the attempt is made to reduce every species to its proper genus, by reason 

 of the almost innumerable genera that appear requisite : and the present family 

 fully exemplifies the above position, if the groups termed genera are to consist 

 of objects having similar habits and structures, as, unless all those here proposed 

 be adopted, it is manifest that species of dissimilar habits, &c. must be impro- 

 perly associated together; though, in extensive genera, the conterminous species 

 frequently differ considerably from the types. Again, Lasiocampa and the 

 cognate genera conspicuously illustrate the absolute impossibility of placing 

 natural objects in a linear series of affinity, while they tend to show the circular 

 disposition which appears to prevail throughout nature, as I have endeavoured 

 to represent by a diagram in my Catalogue, which clearly exhibits the utter 

 im.p7-act{cability of placing every subject in its proper situation by the ordinary 

 linear method of communication, and the facility with which they may be 

 arranged circularly, as nearly every group hitherto treated of in these volumes 

 may be disposed. 



