LARCH CHEATER OTHER LAPPET MOTHS. 267 



roof, the outer edges of the hind wings protruding more or less from under the 

 outer edge of the fore ones. The legs are heavily clothed exteriorly with tufts 

 of lono- snowy white hairs, the forward shanks having a tuft of blackish ones 

 on their insides at the base. 



The female (plate 2, fig. 6) is quite unlike the male, being much larger and 

 differently colored. It has a peculiarly delicate or mellow appearance, from 

 the softness of its colors and the thinness and translucency of its wings. The 

 latter when extended measure an inch and a half or slightly less. Their hind 

 edge is occupied by a slender white band or line. Forward of this is a narrow 

 pale dusky band which is abruptly widened near its middle to double its usual 

 breadth, this widened part occupying two of the intestines between the veins. 

 This band is margined on its anterior side by a white line, by which it is sepa- 

 rated from a much broader and more dusky band, which is waved in its mid- 

 dle in conformity with the dilation in the narrow band behind it. Forward of 

 this the wings are milk white, crossed by four very faint equidistant wavy 

 bands of the same delicate pale dusky hue with those behind, these bands being 

 often obsolete upon the middle of the wing and distinct at their ends only. 

 The veins are prominent and white, forming slender lines of this color crossing 

 all the bands. The hind wings are of the same soft dusky tint as the bands 

 on the fore wings, but more pale, and on their hind margin is a white line or 

 slender band. The hind edge of both pairs of wings is perfectly entire as in 

 the male, and their fringe is pale dusky, on the fore wings crossed with white 

 lines at the tips of the veins. The body is clothed with incumbent milk white 

 hairs, the tip of the abdomen having a pale brown tuft, and the crest on the 

 base of the thorax appears like a large elevated blackish spot. The antennae 

 in this sex (fig. 6 a) are very slightly crooked in their middles, and their 

 branches though equally thick with those of the males, are much shorter, be- 

 ing but about four times as long as the diameter of their stalk. These branches 

 are longest in the middle, and are gradually shorter from thence, both towards 

 the base and the tips. 



This insect belongs to the Order Lepidoptera and the Family 

 BoMBYCiDis. Those European caterpillars which have the sides 

 of their bodies projecting in lappets such as the larva of this 

 species presents form a genus to which the name Gastropacha 

 has been given, and it is to this genus that Dr. Harris refers 

 the two American species of lappet caterpillars which have 

 already been alluded to. One of these, named Americana by 

 Dr. Harris (the Ilicifolia of Abbot and Smith, but not the 

 species thus named by Linnseus) in its colors and other charac- 

 ters is intimately related to the European species of Gastropacha. 

 The other, originally named Bombyx Velleda by Stoll, closely 

 coincides with the insect which we have now described, and 

 differs like it from the other insects included in the genus Gas- 

 tropacha in several important points. It has the same singular 



