Extract of a Letter from Capt. T. Hutton. 85 



XXIII. Extract of a Letter from Capt. Thomas Hutton, 

 H. E. I. C, to J. O. Westwood, Esq. 



[Read November 1st, 1847.] 



Rlussooree, Himalaya Mountains. 

 28tli July, 1847. 



My clear Sir, 



I HAVE long contemplated writing to you, and now that 

 the last mail has brought me the intelligence that you have been 

 kind enough to honour me by naming the new Bomhyx after me, 

 I cannot allow the post to go out without expressing to you my 

 best thanks for your attention and remembrance of me. 



I have nearly made up my mind to make a run home for one 

 year, and in that case shall bring the few insects I have by me, 

 and trust there may be some more novelties worthy of your at- 

 tention. In the mean time I must tell you that I have again this 

 year reared specimens of Actias Selene, and observed attentively 

 the method by which it cuts its way through the cocoon ; and 

 there can be no doubt of the correctness of my former obser- 

 vations in regard to the wing spur, from which I derived the 

 name " Plectropteron,'^ a name which I think, from the novelty 

 of the circumstance, may still hold good, and the species would 

 therefore stand as P. Selene, my P. Diance sinking into a syno- 

 nyme ; it is, as I formerly observed, most probable that Actias 

 luna possesses the same spur ; and the new species lately sketched 

 in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, under the name 

 of ^, Mcenas, most probably possesses it likewise, in which case 

 there would be three species so armed, and forming a good genus 

 characterised as Actias, with the addition of the wing spur ; and 

 at all events the characters of Actias must be remodelled, before 

 A. Selene can find a place in it. 



The habitat of A. Mcenas is very confusedly given in the 

 Magazine of Natural History, it being stated the species is from 

 Sylhet, and yet that it is from " Northern India." Sylhet is to 

 the eastward, not northward. 



Let me now call your attention more particularly to the instru- 

 ment which I have named " the wing spur;" that instrument is 

 not the part you thought I alluded to in my notice of the insect, 

 but is totally distinct from it, and projects from the joint of the 

 wing. The part you alluded to, viz. the tippet, (tegula or i)tery- 



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