LARENTID.E—MESOTYPE. 3 



Variable in both sexes, but more particularly in the female, 

 in the tint of ground colour of the fore wings, and in the 

 colour and intensity of the central band ; the ground colour 

 varies to white or creamy-white in one direction, and to dark 

 grey, grey-brown, and purple-brown in the other ; where it 

 is some full or dark shade of grey the central band is usually 

 of the same colour, and the conspicuous markings are the 

 white stripes at the margins of the band, with sometimes a 

 slender one also in the band ; where it is a lighter shade of 

 grey the band often becomes itself conspicuous by the dark- 

 ness of its margins ; when the ground is brownish-white the 

 band varies, sometimes almost equally pale with margins 

 only a little darker, sometimes wholly filled up with dark 

 grey-brown, or showing every intermediate shade ; when it 

 is creamy white — especially in the female — the band is apt 

 to be conspicuous and very pretty ; more rarely specimens 

 •occur in which the ground colour is dull brownish-purple 

 and the band yellowish-white, or ground and band purple- 

 brown, and the stripes white ; or the ground colour is grey, 

 with the usual dark margins to the band, but its middle ai-ea 

 pale yellow ; indeed, it is far from easy to indicate in words 

 the variations and transpositions of colour in its oblique 

 bands. 



On the wing from April till the beginning of June, and as 

 a second generation in July and August. 



Larva slender, uniform in bulk when viewed from above, 

 but when seen sideways tapering to each extremity ; head 

 nearly as wide as the second segment, somewhat flattened, 

 but the lobes having a rounded outline, yellow, freckled with 

 brown ; general colour variable above, the back being dull 

 pink, lighter or deeper in tint, warm brown or olive-brown ; 

 •dorsal line dark brown or blackish-green, sometimes bordered 

 with yellowish-jDink ; subdorsal line thin, yellowish on seg- 

 ments two, three, eleven, twelve, and thirteen, on the rest of 

 a paler tint of the ground colour ; space between the sub- 



