( elxxi ) 
whilst they are exactly like a pictorial representation of a 
far-away bird) has scales—all that are left to it or perhaps 
all it has yet attained—of a most remarkable pattern, they 
are all alike and yet they vary extraordinarily. A fairly 
accurate description of the shape is that already given of a 
far-away bird in the air, some scales are however the shape of 
the merrythought of a bird, a few are like a merrythought 
but with an additional outside bone on each side, at the base 
an occasional scale may have a broader lamination at the 
proximal end, one being quite a good scale very deeply trifid 
whilst another is quadrifid; the vast majority however have 
scarcely any lamina, consisting mainly of three (occasionally 
four) lines, a thin trident, with the prongs straight or slightly 
curved, sometimes wide apart, sometimes closer together. 
In the dark marginal parts of the wing the scales are brown, 
not white, and they all have more lamina than the white 
ones, not however that they are much more numerous. On 
the underside most of the scales are of the same pattern 
but they are almost linear. There are however at the base 
a number of a different pattern, being almost the shape of an 
oat, they are not flat, but as a grain (say an oat), coarsely 
ribbed, but with a covering superposed so that under direct 
light the ribbing shows but faintly through, though it is 
distinctly visible with transmitted light; the secondaries 
have the same pattern as the primaries. Pentila undularis 
(the type of the genus) has scales that do not call for special 
remark, those in the subcostal and inner marginal areas are 
very typical of the whole order, but the pattern of those 
occupying the median and postmedian areas of the wing are 
different; they are short broad scales, quite as broad as long 
generally, and tulip-shaped, the surface appears to be deeply 
indented up the central line, so that it has an unusual waved 
appearance. 
In libyssa the scales differ only in detail but on each vein 
there is a row of small narrow elliptical scales with the apices 
truncated and slightly excised in the centre. 
In Megalopalpus and Oberonia, both genera with only white 
species, the scales call for no special remark. They are all 
somewhat typical in the main of the ordinary Plebewd genera, 
