LARENTID.-E—MELAXTHIA. 1 17 



a large dark browu patch on the bade at the base ; anal tuft 

 rather well developed, faintly tinged with brown. Fore wings 

 broad; all the margins rounded; apex bluntly angulated ; 

 colour exquisitely pure creamy-white ; basal blotch large, 

 extending to the first line, and composed of alternate blue 

 and brown-black stripes, the outer margin a little more 

 tinged with orange-brown ; discal s])ot small, black ; toward 

 the apex is a large, somewhat trigonate, brown-black costal 

 Ijlotch, divided by one or two glistening blue lines or threads ; 

 from it arises the second line, slender, red-brown, thickened 

 on the dorsal margin, but otherwise most daintily curving, in 

 a fine thread, from nervure to nervure ; beyond it and lying 

 near the hind margin is an interrupted stripe of blue-grey 

 clouds, reduced in the middle portion to spots ; closely 

 followed by a more complete grey stripe which includes the 

 cilia ; through this, however, a white streak runs obliquely 

 into the apes. Hind wings ample, I'ounded behind, white; 

 the hind marginal region broadly occupied by smoky-grey 

 clouds, before wliinh is a slender interrupted transverse line 

 of the iame colour ; c>:^ntral spot small, black, pkiced near 

 the base ; cilia smoky-grey, clouded with white. Female 

 quite similar. 



Undei-sides of all the wings creamy-white ; central spots 

 all large, smoky-black ; basal blotch, and the hind marginal 

 cloudings of the upper side, reproduced in grey clouds on 

 the fore wings, but in the hind the marginal band is hardly 

 represented. Body and legs yellowish-white ; tarsi browu, 

 barred with white. 



Very few of our species, if any, equal this for the exquisite 

 jiurity of its colouring and delicacy of its markings. 



Usually very constant in both colour and markiugs, but 

 Dr. P. B. Mason possesses a specimen, reared in Yorkshire, 

 in which the white colouring of the fore wings is rejilaced by 

 leaden-black, and the hind wings are broadlj- bordered with 

 the same colour ; and Mr. Sydney Webb has one in which 

 the lara'e basal and costal blotches are blurred and clouded 



