206 LEPIDOPTERA. 



angle. Body and legs greyish-white ; front tibias white, 

 broadly barred with black. 



Variation is, as above indicated, very great in the shade of 

 ground colour on emergence, and this is complicated by a 

 tendency to fading even during life, but much increased after 

 death. There is also irregularity in the distinctness of the 

 black markings, which sometimes are thick, very conspicuous 

 and deep black, in other examples slender or partially 

 suppressed, and in one well-known variety devoid of the 

 black pigment, and changed into olive-brown shades most 

 visible from their whiter edgings. In a form which has the 

 ground colour very pale-green, almost pale yellow, these 

 lines, though black, are the merest fragmentary indications 

 or edgings of lines ; other specimens, again, are of peculiar 

 brilliancy both in colour and markings ; some such, of a most 

 brilliant green, have been obtained on walls in the Kentish 

 coast towns, and among them I have seen one of a dark- 

 green colour having the lines white. Still more remarkable 

 for their extreme variations are specimens from South Devon. 

 In a series of these sent up by the Eev. 0. F. Benthall of 

 Starcross are specimens having the usual black markings, 

 but the ground colour very dark deep green, or in another 

 case orange-brown ; others blue-green or grey-green, with 

 the black markings either sharply edged with white or 

 exchanged in part for white ; another of an orange-olive 

 colour, in which the black and white markings are spread out 

 into cloudy-black, and more slender white, stripes ; another 

 in which the ground colour of the right fore wing is dull 

 green, that of the left pale smoky-grey ; another has the 

 fore wings white, with faint yellowish-olive suggestions of 

 the usual markings ; and again, another has the outer 

 margins of these wings whitened. From the same district, 

 Mr. F. C. Woodforde has brought a specimen of which the 

 ground colour is pale yellow banded with orange ochreous 

 between the very slender black markings. A series of 

 specimens taken at Chippenham, Wilts, by Professor 



