URANIA SLOANUS AT HOME. 243 



wild walnut. I had supposed that this would prove the Picro- 

 dendron juglans of Grisebach ; but Sir Joseph D. Hooker assures 

 me that it is not that species. The material was in fact 

 insufficient for determination, which had to be deferred till 

 another season should enable my friend to remit me a specimen 

 with flower and germen. This he has now done with more larvae 

 and pupae ; and the plant proves, on the same high authority, to 

 be no other than the euphorbiaceous cob-nut, Omphalea triandra, 

 which Mr. Macleay gives as the food of the allied Urania Fernan- 

 dince in Cuba ; a tree whose polymorphic leaves may well excuse 

 the fisherman's mistake. 



I have now but to add careful descriptions of — 



The Lakva and Pupa of Ueania Sloanus. 



Of the Larva the general figure is that common to many 

 caterpillars, especially among the Bombyces and Noctuae, the 

 segments nearly cylindric, and equal in thickness throughout; 

 carrying four pairs of prolegs, besides the anal pair. The head 

 is smaller (but not conspicuously) than the first thoracic segment, 

 from which it protrudes without the intervention of any neck, 

 such as that common in Hesperidan larvae : it is marked from 

 occiput to lip by an indentation. Its colour is uniformly a reddish 

 fulvous ; smooth ; each cheek carrying six simple ocelli, arranged 

 thus : five in a bow, of which the central three are larger than 

 the rest, and one on the cord of the bow. 



The body is black, with a rather broad band running down 

 on each side of the middle through the entire length. This band 

 consists of two lines of white, somewhat irregular and interrupted, 

 joined by numerous cross lines still more irregular. The efi'ect 

 produced is as if two lines of Hebrew, the modern square 

 character, had been written in white paint all down the black 

 back. The median line, which, in my examples in alcohol, is 

 as black as the rest of the ground-colour, is described by 

 Mr. Mais as blue in the living larva. Down each side, including 

 the spiracles, is a single slender white line, much interrupted. 

 The ventral surface is black, bounded on each side by a broad 

 band of yellowish white, which includes the fulvous legs, and the 

 white prolegs. Each segment appears to carry a whorl of long, 

 very slender, fusiform hairs, black for their basal half, white for 

 their terminal. These are probably deciduous ; since in the 



