Heterocerous Lepidoptera from Japan. 15 
stramineous; ocelli small, oval, stramineous, with 
slender linear transparent pupil, and bounded internally 
by a white-edged black curved litura; primaries with 
plum-coloured costal border ; body white, back of collar 
plum-coloured ; antenne testaceous; expanse of wings, 
5 inches 8 lines. 
Male. Tokei (Fenton). 
In a paper upon the Sphingide! published some time 
since by Herr Maassen, it is asserted that my 7’. gnoma 
owes the brown veins on its wings to rubbing, and is 
nothing else than 7’. artemis; I should be sorry to con- 
tradict so reliable an authority as Herr Maassen, but 
for the fact that the type of my species has never been 
examined by him; as it is, although it is true that the 
veins in my type are rubbed, and may therefore owe their 
brown colouring to this fact, I find that the female (when 
fresh) possesses distinctly sandy yellowish veins, the 
colour of which is not due to rubbing. But, in the 
second place, [ am not aware that I laid especial stress 
upon the one character of vein-coloration ; I certainly 
never intended to do so, for the form of the wings offers 
a far more important distinction between 7’. gnoma and 
T’. artemis; the long narrow tails of the secondaries, 
common to both sexes of J’. gnoma, are quite sufficient 
to separate it at a glance from 7’. artemis; but, again, 
Herr Maassen says that even these structural differences 
are not reliable, and in proof of this assertion he goes on 
to specify the points of difference between his examples 
of T'ropea luna. A comparison, however, of specimens 
of a species, so frequently reared* in confinement as 
T. luna, with those of a purely wild form must necessarily 
be an unfair one, since it is well known that the domes- 
tication of any animal tends greatly to increase its 
variability. 
In the second place, Herr Maassen does not say 
whence the specimens which he calls J’. luna were 
obtained; he does not assure us that he has seen the 
whole of the described forms referable to the genus, so 
as to be certain of the correctness of the statement that 
these forms (which he regards as varieties) have not 
been described as species; nay, on the contrary, he 
* Herr Maassen implies that all his specimens are bred; he 
says, ‘“‘ Rearing has taught that all these different aberrations 
spring from eggs which a single female has laid.” 
