LARENTID.^—MELANTHIA. 1 1 1 



grey or olive-brown ; extreme hind margin slenderly edged 

 by a black line ; cilia grey-brown or white in accordance 

 with the adjacent margins. Hind wings long, rounded 

 behind, white; central spot a minute black dot; along the 

 hind margin is a broad double cloudj^ gri^y baud ; cilia white 

 clouded with grey. Female similar, but usually larger. 



Underside a more smoky and clouded repetition of the 

 colour and markings of the upper. Body and legs white, 

 shaded with brown. 



A permanently recurrent form of variation is found in this 

 species, principally in the more northern districts. It con- 

 sists in a strong suffusion of smoke colour over the white 

 areas. lu some specimens this is partial, extending only to 

 the fore wings, and in them leaving a white line outside the 

 basal blotch, or a white subterminal line, or both, with or 

 without some whitish shading towards the hind margin or 

 between the basal and central markings. In others it is 

 comj)lete so far as the fore wings are concerned, and extends 

 in a more or less definite manner to the hind, sometime^ 

 extending along the margins, in other cases to the whole- 

 area, but not in so intense a degree as in the fore wings. 

 But the degree of darkness is not proportionate, and the 

 handsomest examples with blackened fore wings and slender 

 neat white lines have white hind wings. Pei'haps thi' 

 prettiest form of all is one in which fore aud hind wings are 

 smoothly smoky-black, but the markings of the fore wings 

 are olive brown, and are margined with slender stripes of 

 smoky-white. 



There is also the constant variation, already referred to, 

 from the typical large costal blotch to the form in which the 

 central band is fully formed (called by Curtis plumJiata); 

 and a tendency in some specimens to obliteration of thp 

 hind marginal grey bands and consequent extension of the 

 white area; this last phase of variation apjiearing to occur 

 more particularly in the female. The only remarkable 

 instance of aberration, outside the lines indicated, is in 



