BOARMID^—BOARMIA. 195 



lines on the wings often less definite or partially obliterated ; 

 otherwise quite similar. 



Underside of all the wings creamy smooth brownish-white 

 faintly dusted with brown along the costa3 only ; discal spot 

 of the fore wings large, ovate, dull black, followed by a 

 curved transverse line of black spots, largest and most 

 distinct on and near the costa ; before the apex is a perpen- 

 dicular dull black-brown blotch consisting of three cloudy 

 spots ; central spot of the hind wings a small obscure faintly 

 black streak, followed by a transverse row of faint similar 

 spots which forms a central line, most distinct on the costal 

 margin ; cilia of all the wings yellowish-white. Body and 

 legs brownish-white except the tarsi, which are black-brown 

 barred with white. 



Not very variable, but the dusting and markings, which in 

 freshly emerged specimens are grey, fade very quickly during 

 life, so that the majority of captured specimens are rather 

 dusted with pale brown than grey. There is also some 

 difference in this respect in different localities ; and speci- 

 mens in the collection of Mr. F. J. Hanbury, obtained in 

 Essex, are strongly marked and very handsome. Mr. Sydney 

 Webb has one much suffused with smoky-grey, and others 

 with very conspicuously dark markings ; and Mr. Percy 

 Bright possesses a female example from the New Forest in 

 which all the markings are obliterated, except those near the 

 hind margins, which are unusually dark. Mrs. Bazett has 

 taken, in the neighbourhood of Reading, Berks, a specimen 

 which is almost black, and this leads to a form of extreme 

 interest. It is, so far as I know, one of the most recent 

 departures of any species, in the tendency to uniform black- 

 ness, which has been observed in so many of our Geometridae 

 within the last forty years. In 1893 I saw in the collection 

 of Mr. S. J. Capper six specimens, all of a beautifully smooth 

 smoky-black, devoid of the usual dusting and markings, but 

 having the nervures of all the wings, and the central spot of 

 the hind, deeper black. These came from a correspondent 



