TRIFIDsE. 215 



and without dorsal crests ; lateral and anal tufts compressed. 

 Fore wings short, trigonate, narrow at the base ; costa almost 

 straight ; apex sharply angulated ; hind margin oblique, 

 rather straight, but usually a little curved off toward the 

 anal angle ; dorsal margin straight ; colour dull brown or 

 yellow-brown, with a faint olive tint to the middle, the hinder 

 half of the wing occupied by two rich purple parallel bands 

 between which is a slender stripe of the ground colour, and 

 sometimes the inner band is faintly clouded or shaded with 

 the same ; a slender purple stripe also lies along the base of 

 the costa ; cilia brownish-purple. Hind wings rather long 

 and narrow, rounded behind ; very dull brown with a faint 

 olive tint, darker toward the base, and sometimes having a 

 darker transverse cloud in the middle, or a stripe of dusky 

 purple clouding along the hind margin, but very obscure ; 

 cilia long, whitish-brown shaded with purple. Female 

 smaller, with shorter, thicker body ; fore wings shorter and 

 more uniformly of a darker olive-brown ; the hind wings 

 more blackened and the cross-band of darker brown in them 

 often more noticeable ; the purple bands of the fore wings 

 sometimes quite distinct, in other specimens entirely absent, 

 replaced by the ground colour ; and in these there is little or 

 no purple colouring upon the cilia. 



Underside of the fore wings pale olive-brown shaded in 

 the middle and along the hind margin with purple, and 

 beyond the middle with yellow ; hind wings very similar. 

 Body and legs olive-brown. 



Variation is mainly confined to the depth of the ground 

 colour — from yellow-brown to blackish-brown ; and to the 

 oblique purple transverse stripes. These last, as already 

 remarked, are sometimes entirely absent ; in other cases the 

 inner one is partially so, its inner half alone being visible, 

 and this sometimes brilliant and sharply defined ; in other 

 specimens it is divided into two, so that the wing is orna- 

 mented with three parallel purple stripes, the outer very 

 much the broader. In those instances in which the purple 



