124 LEPIDOPTERA. 



3. Z. meliloti, Esp. — Expanse 1 to 1^ inch. 

 Fore wings rather opaque ; dull dark grey, with five red 

 spots ; hind wings red with grey margin ; body blue-black. 



Antennse blue-black, slender at the base, curved forward and 

 recurved in the thicker portion beyond the middle; apex rather 

 blunt. Head, thorax, and abdomen deep black, or greenish 

 black, with smooth surface, except that in the male there is 

 a row of tufts of slightly longer black scales down each side 

 of the abdomen. Fore wings narrow throughout, more than 

 usually rounded off at the apex and anal angle, which last, in 

 fact, disappears. Thinly scaled, hardly opaque, smoky blackish- 

 grey, or glistening purplish blue, according to the direction 

 in which the light falls ; but usually appearing of a dull 

 smoky grey, with five light, bright, scarlet spots, two at the 

 base rather equally elongated, two, rounder in shape, in the 

 middle, of which the upper is small, lying in the angle of two 

 nervures, and a fifth, also nearly round, beyond the middle. 

 Hind wings rather short and narrow, rounded at the apex, 

 and having the hind margin nearly straight ; bright crimson- 

 scarlet, with the marginal band rather narrow, blackish grey 

 shot with intense blue. Cilia of all the wings dark grey? 

 shot with purple and golden. Sexes alike, except that the 

 fore wings of the female are slightly the broader. 



Underside thinly scaled, similar to the upper, but with the 

 dark portions fainter in colour. 



Very constant in colour and markings ; but in Mr. B. G. 

 Rye's collection is a specimen in which the spots are united 

 into elongated blotches separated by the nervures (as in 

 Z. Minos). Mr. J. J. F. X. King has one with all united into a 

 single long red blotch, and Mr. W. H. B. Fletcher another. 

 He has also this year (1893) reared a specimen having indis- 

 tinct sixth spots. 



On the wing in July. 



Larva nearly one inch long, plump ; head very small and 

 retractile, black spotted with white ; dorsal plate small, green 



