176 LEPIDOPTERA. 



usually visible only in part ; the points of the crescents, 

 however, run into long dark streaks on the nervures, and 

 thus cut up a band of the ground colour which lies outside 

 the second line ; subterminal line shining whitish-yellow, 

 formed into two bi'oad crescents, and between these into a 

 sharp W, the hinder points of which run into the cilia ; on 

 the inner side of this line are black clouds and wedge-shaped 

 streaks ; outside it the marginal space is dark purple-brown ; 

 orbicular stigma only indicated by a small curved black- 

 brown streak on each side, otherwise open ; the inner dark 

 edge often joined to the first line and forming a black spot ; 

 reniform stigma edged at the back with black-brown but 

 otherwise hardly indicated, its space often partially occupied 

 by a reddish or purple-brown cloud which extends outside it ; 

 claviform stigma long, thick, conspicuously black, shaped 

 like a dog's canine tooth ; extreme hind margin dotted with 

 black ; cilia purple-brown dusted with white and having a 

 yellowish line along their base. Hind wings rather large, pale 

 smoky-brown with darker brown nervures ; sometimes an 

 irregular ill-defined whitish stripe arising at the anal angle 

 lies across part of the hind marginal area ; cilia white. 

 Female extremely similar. 



Underside shining smoky-brown, paler toward the dorsal 

 margin, reniform stigma dusky black ; beyond it is a faintly 

 blackish transverse stripe arising from a blacker costal spot. 

 Hind wings dusky white, dusted over the costal half with 

 brown ; central spot black ; beyond it is a dark-brown trans- 

 verse stripe ; body and legs purple-brown. 



Very subject to local variation. In some of its localities, 

 as in Essex and also in South Wales, its fore wings are 

 broadly suffused with smoky-brown or blackish-brown, more 

 especially in the middle, though sometimes extending over 

 whole area ; elsewhere on the coast, as in Suffolk and South 

 Devon, and more frequently in the mosses of Lancashire and 

 Cheshire, it becomes of a singular, smooth, almost uniform 

 purple-brown, paler or darker, and in many instances with all 



