72 CATOCALA FLEBILIS. 



Secondaries black, with white fringe. 



Under surface; primaries black; a small white basal patch, a white spot or space in cell, and a very 

 narrow, half obsolete, white sub-marginal band. 



Secnndiiries white ; a broad black marginal and narrower mesial band, the white space between these two 

 is very narrow. 



Found in same localities as C. Desperata, but by no means as common. 



FIG. 4 is a variety, occasionally occurring, in which the broad central longitudinal dash is broken in the 

 middle at the reniform and sub-reniform. 



For the original of this figure (4) I am indebted to friend Angus, of West Farms, N. Y., who captured 

 near that village, at various times, examples of this variety, and to whose goodness I have been again and 

 again indebted for valuable additions to my cabinet, as welf as many other acts of kindness. 



CATOCALA AHOLIBAH. Nov. Sp ^ 



(PLATE IX, FIG. 5, ?.) 



Expands 3 inches. 



Head and thorax, above, dark brown, with scattered white or grey scales ; abdomen brown. Beneath 

 light brownish grey. 



Upper surface ; primaries dark brown frosted and intermixed with white and grey ; a white space adjoin- 

 ing the reniform inwardly; reniform indistinct; sub-reniform very small, white, surrounded with black,' and 

 entirely disconnected with the transverse posterior line. 



Secondaries crimson, with brownish hair at the base; median band rather narrow and regular, and con- 

 tinued to within a short distance of the abdominal margin, where it turns upwards and is lost in the brownish 

 hair that clothes that part. 



Under surtiice ; primaries crossed by three black bands, none of which join or merge with each other; 

 the spaces between the base and snb-bosal band, and between the latter and the median band, are orange col- 

 oured inclining a little to crimson at the interior margin ; the space between the median an 1 marginal bands 

 is white; fringe white, with black at terminations of the veins. 



Secondaries; inner two-thirds crimson, a little paler than on upper .side, rest white; marginal band tin«-cd 

 with grey at and iiear the costa ; median band terminates about one line from abdominal margin; slight 

 indications of a discal crescent connecting with the median band ; fringe white. 



Habitat. California. 



The above description and accompanying figure were taken from the single 5 example contained in the 

 collection of Mr. James Eehrens, of San Francisco, to whose practical and extended labors in Entomology we 

 are indebted for our knowledge of many of the Pacific species, and wlio, in order to enable me to present 

 the species, had the almost unprecedented generosity to rob his own fine cabinet of the only example it con- 

 tained of this insect. He says, in reference to it, that "it is a frequenter of the deepest, darkest gulches and 

 glens of the higher mountains of California," and further, that it flics in July and August, and was the wildest 

 animal he ever saw. 



This species closely resembles C. Sponsa* and its ally, C Dilectaf; the primaries, on upper surface, have 

 a striking similarity, especially to Sponsa, and the ground colour of .secondaries is the same, but. there the 

 resemblance ceases; the black bands of secondaries are different, and in the under surface of primaries of the 

 two European species the black bands are broader, and the sub-ba.sal and median at the inner half of the wing are 

 connected, and the median and marginal are almost confluent at and towards the interior margin, and the narrow 

 spaces between all these bands are entirely white. In the secondaries the crimson extends much nearer to the costa, 

 and there is a large black discal lune or spot. I have been thus particular in my descriptive remarks of the 

 above analogous European species, inasmuch as, no matter how careful a drawing be made, the student does 

 not of course feel that certainty whilst comparing his example with it, and is often apt to think, if the differ- 

 ences are not very strongly marked ones, that they may be the result of the artists not being exhaustively 

 accurate, and is, consequently, sometimes thereby led to erroneous conclusions. But the shape of the black 

 bands on upper surface of secondaries, and the spaces between the black bands on under surface of primaries 



*Linne. Syst. Nat., 841, (1767). 



t Hubner, Sam. Eur. Schraett., 388, (1793-1827). 



