142 GRAPE-VINE. LEAVES — GARTERED PLUME. MOTH. 



like a garter, and as its wings are also banded, the name perisceli- 

 dactylus or Gartered Plume, may appropriately be given to it. 



Like other species of this family, this moth is very agile, rapid, 

 and impetuous in its motions, when disturbed, bounding from 

 side to side of the cage in which it is confined, almost with the 

 velocity of lightning, for a moment, and then resting, clinging 

 with its four anterior feet to the top of the cage, its wings spread 

 and its body hanging perpendicularly downwards and swinging 

 to and fro with the wind, with its long hind legs extended as if to 

 protect the sides of the abdomen, and the feet nearly in contact 

 below its tip. It is of a tawny yellow color, the fore wings with 

 three white spots and beyond these two white bands, the fringe 

 white with a blackish spat on the middle and another on the 

 apex oi the inner margin. 



This moth measures 0.35 to the tip of its abdomen, and its wings expand 

 0.85. Its antennae are 0.20 long, black, with a row of small white spots on 

 each side running their whole length. The palpi which curve upwards in front 

 of the head to a level with its crown, resembling two little horns, are tawny 

 brown or rust-colored in front, their bases whitish. The thorax is tawny yel- 

 low, white at its base. The three first segments of the abdomen have a 

 white spot at their bases and the third has two diverging white stripes which 

 reach its apex. The fourth segment is without spots and of a darker color, its 

 apex blackish. The remaining segments have two parallel white stripes which 

 are faint or obsolete on the base of each segment. Beneath, the abdomen is 

 snowy white with two tawny yellow stripes, or tawny yellow with three 

 rows of large white spots confluent into ■ stripes at the base. Legs white; 

 haunches with a tawny yellow stripe on their outer side; four anterior legs 

 with black stripes; middle shanks with a projecting spine-like tuft of tawny 

 yellow scales above their middle, and encircled at tip by a darker colored tuft; 

 hind shanks with a similar tuft at each pair of spines; spines black beneath 

 and at base, those of the hind shanks black at their tips also. Feet white, 

 apical joints of the four anterior ones, and a band on the apex of each of the 

 other joints tawny-yellow. Fore wings bifid, the cleft reaching almost to their 

 middle, tawny-yellow, with two oblique white bands crossing both their forks, 

 the space between these bands often rusty brown; a transverse white spot at 

 the commencement of the cleft, edged on its inner side with rusty brown; two 

 white spots inside of this, the first towards the outer the second upon the inner 

 margin. Fringe white with a blackish spot on the middle and a larger one at 

 the apex of the inner margin. The inner lobe of the wing between the black 

 spot and its tip notched in the form of a semicircle, with a blackish line upon 

 the base of the fringe in this notch. Hind wings trifid, the anterior cleft reach- 

 ing their middle, the posterior one extending to the base; rusty brown, tawny 

 yellow at base; hind lobe slender, white and fringed with white with a broad 

 blackish band near its tip. 



