334 



LEPIDOPTERA. 



shade behind it, not very oblique but divided into numei-ous 

 crescents between nervures, and the hollows of the crescents 

 very dark ; subterminal line almost parallel, pale yellow- 

 brown, edged at the back by a series of cloudy dark purple- 

 brown spots ; the space between it and the second line is 

 filled in with very rich tawny-red, divided by the paler 

 nervures so as to form a beautiful ribbon-like band ; orbi- 

 cular stigma rather compressed but only visible by its faintly 

 paler margin ; reniform stigma obscurely yellowish-brown 

 slenderly margined with paler, but often hardly perceptible ; 

 passing between these stigmata is a conspicuous, widely 

 angulated, fulvous or tawny central shade ; the extreme costal 

 margin is partially edged with purple-red ; cilia pale tawny, 

 tipped with darker. Hind wings tinged over the middle 

 area, and especially upon the nervures, with smoky-black, 

 which shades oft' along the costal region and hind margin 

 into white with a lovely pink tinge ; this also is there 

 strongest upon the nervures ; cilia yellowish- white, tipped 

 with purplish pink. Female closely similar, abdomen 

 shorter but very little thicker/ less conspicuously tufted at 

 the tip ; antennae devoid of the tufted cilia. 



Underside of the fore wings shining reddish-white, more 

 brilliantly red and approaching vermilion at the apex ; 

 nervures tinged with the same, reniform stigma visible as 

 a smoky black spot. Hind wings pinkish-white, tinged with 

 purple-pink on the costal margin and nervures, and having a 

 cloud of the same at the apex. Body and leg-tufts bril- 

 liantly purplish-pink, but with long white hair-scales ; legs 

 tawny. 



Rather variable in the tint of the transverse bands and 

 central shade, paler to rust-red, darker to very deep purple- 

 red ; and in the colour of the central portion of the hind wings 

 from smoky-white to smoky-black. In South Yorkshire, the 

 district in which so many species assume a black tendency, 

 this becomes of a dull uniform reddish-buff, of coarse texture, 

 and with only faint traces of the usual beautiful transverse 



