LEPIDOrXERA. 



309 



handU'd it is perfectly harmless, and unable to sting or wound 

 with its frightful horns. It lives solitary on walnut and hick- 

 ory trees, the leaves of which it eats ; crawls down and goes 

 into the ground towards the end of summer, and changes to a 

 chrysalis without previously making a cocoon. Unfortunately 

 my caterpillars died before the time for their transformation 

 arrived. The chrysalis is short and thick ; obtuse behind, but 

 terminated by two minute points ; and the transverse notched 

 ridces or little teeth that are found on the chrysalids of the 

 other insects belonging to the same family, are very small and 

 hardly visible on this one. The insect remains in the ground 

 through the winter, and the moth comes out in the following 

 summer, during the month of June, if I am rightly informed. 

 I have not been able to obtain one myself, and my description 

 of the moth was made from a very fine specimen belonging to 

 a friend, who received it from New Bedford. 



Between the regal Ceratocampa and the smaller insects of 

 this family belonging to the new genus Dri/ocampa, should be 

 placed a noble moth, which partakes, in some respects, of the 

 characters of both; its horned caterpillar, particularly while 

 young, when its horns are proportionally longer and more 

 formidable in appearance than afterwards, resembles some- 

 what that of the Ceratocampa ; its chrysalis is exactly like that 

 of a Dri/ocampa, and like the latter also, in the winged state, 

 its feelers are minute, its hind wings project beyond the front 

 edges of the fore wings when at rest, and its style of coloring 

 is the same. In my Catalogue of the " Insects of Massachu- 

 setts," I placed this moth, the imperialis of Drury, in the genus 

 Ceratocampa, from which, how^ever, it must be removed, on 

 account of its very small feelers, and the position of its wings ; 

 and I now refer it, with some hesitation, to the genus Dnjo- 

 campa, with which it agrees so well in the moth state, although 

 its caterpillar diflfers a good deal from those of the other insects 

 of the same genus. The imperial moth, Dnjocampa imperialis 

 has wings of a fine yellow color, thickly sprinkled with purple- 

 brown dots, with a large patch at the base, a small round spot 

 near the middle, and a wavy band towards the hinder margin 

 of each wing, of a light purple-brown color ; in the males there 



