266 LARCH CHEATER THE MOTH DESCRIBED. 



The moths are short, stout, thick-bodied, densely coated with 

 long soft hairs, the males dark gray or almost black, the females 

 white and a third larger. Both sexes have a singular crest upon 

 the hind part of the thorax, formed of long curved scales which 

 are glistening and resin-like, of an auburn brown color, arranged 

 like the hairs of a moustache and jutting up from the surround- 

 ing prostrate hairs, forming a large tuft or protuberant oblong 

 spot, broadest posteriorly and narrowing to its anterior end. 

 The scales of this crest are of a peculiar form, being slender and 

 hair-like with their ends dilated into an oval flattened knob, 

 their shape thus resembling that of a spoon. When they are at 

 rest these moths appear like excrescences upon the limb on 

 which they repose, so exactly do they adjust themselves to it, 

 their wings being held together in the shape of a roof, with their 

 lower edges pressed firmly against the sides of the branch, and 

 their white fore feet stretched forward resembling pitch which 

 has exuded from a wound and running downward has dried in 

 white streaks upon the bark. 



The males (plate 2, fig. 5) measure 0.60 in length to the tip of the abdomen 

 and of the wings, and one inch across the latter when they are spread. The 

 head is densely clothed with white hairs in front and with blackish ones upon 

 each side around the eyes. The feelers are minute and are wholly enveloped 

 and concealed by long fine hairs, their ends forming a slight projection like the 

 point of a camel's hair pencil. These hairs are blackish on their outer sides 

 and ash-gray within. The antennas are short, about a third of the length of 

 the body, and are abruptly bent near their middle (as shown in the magnified 

 fig. 5 a,) or with the ends straight in both directions from the crook near their 

 middle, when they present the shape of an inverted V. They are furnished 

 with two rows of coarse branches, which are long from the base to the crook, 

 where they are abruptly shortened to half their previous length, and continue 

 thence to gradually diminish in length to their tips. Each branch has a row 

 of very fine hairs along one side, resembling eye lashes. The mouth has only 

 the minute rudiments of a spiral tongue, and this not coiled as we see it in 

 moths generally. The thorax is clothed with long hairs of a dark gray color, 

 those at its anterior end white, and on its posterior part is the oblong crest of 

 flossy spoon-shaped scales previously mentioned. The abdomen tapers slight- 

 ly from its base to the tip and is clothed with blackish hairs above, whitish 

 ones beneath, its apex having a dense tuft of long pure white ones. The wings 

 are quite small for such a thick-bodied heavy moth. They are semi-trans- 

 parent, being thinly covered with brown scales which are commonly denuded, 

 the wings then appearing perfectly transparent like glass. Their veins are 

 robust and white with darker irregular bands. The hind margins of both 

 pairs of wings are entire and not in the least toothed or scalloped. When at 

 rest they are pressed against the sides of the abdomen, in the form of a steep 



