LEPIDOPTERA. 293 



on the sides were gray, and many of them were tipped with a 

 white knob. The caterpillar eats the leaves of the apple-tree, 

 feeding only in the night, and remaining perfectly quiet during 

 the day. The moth produced from it was supposed by Sir J. 

 E. Smith* to be the same as the European 1/icifolia, or holly- 

 leaved lappet-moth, from which, however, it diflers in so many 

 respects that I shall venture to give it another name. It 

 belongs to the genus Gastropac/ia, so called from the very 

 thick bodies of the moths ; and the present species may be 

 named Americana, the American lappet-moth. Were it not 

 for its regular shape, it might, when at rest, very easily be 

 mistaken for a dry, brown, and crumpled leaf. The feelers 

 are somewhat prominent like a short beak ; the edges of the 

 under wings are very much notched, as are the hinder and 

 inner edges of the fore wings, and these notches are white ; its 

 general color is a red-brown ; behind the middle of each of the 

 wings is a pale band, 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. IVIr. 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 StoU, 

 so named after a celebrated German female, commemorated 

 by the ancient historian Tacitus. This moth has a very large, 



* See Abbot's "Insects of Georgia," p. 101, pi. 51. 



