BED ADMIRAL. 59 



splendid beauty, still glitter as welcomely in the eyes of the entomol- 

 ogist as the sunshine of the returning spring that calls them out. One 

 which had lived through the winter was seen on the Jind., 10th., 12th., 

 and 18th. of June. 



The caterpillar is to be found in July- It continues fourteen days 

 in chrysalis. 



It feeds on the common nettle, giving a preference to the seeds. 



The wings of this insect expand to the width of from two and a 

 half to three inches. The ground-colour of the fore wings is intense 

 velvet blue black on the outside half, and intense copper brown black 

 on the inner. A bar of lovely red runs nearly across them, not quite 

 reaching to their lower corner; towards which it is slightly curved. 

 It is irregular on its margins, formed, as it were, of a series of rounded 

 oblong patches. Between this bar and the tip of the wings is a similar 

 short bar of pure white, formed of three patches; and a fourth lies 

 like an island beyond it, interrupted by the ground-colour of the wings. 

 This latter one forms the largest of a chain of white spots, which 

 sweep by it, one inside, and three outside, of which the latter two are 

 very small dots, and the third at the top is a narrow oblong curve. 

 Beyond these, and between them and the tip of the wing, is an obscure 

 wave of purple blue. The margin of the wings is white, indented 

 crescent-wise on the ground-colour. 



The hind wings are deep velvet brown black, with a broad margin 

 to all their middle part of fine red, in which are four black dots. At 

 the lower inside corner of the wings are two small conjoined oblong 

 marks of purple blue. The margin of the wings is white, indented in 

 curves into the red bar, and shaded with blackish brown, forming a 

 sort of dots between each segment. 



Underneath, the fore wings are mottled brown at the tip, and there 

 are near it two small white dots, surrounded by two rings of brown. 

 The red bar and the white spots shew through from above, and 

 between them, near the fore edge, are two small waved transverse 

 stripes of metallic blue. The upper inner corner of the red bar is 

 intersected by a bar of brownish black, and bounded by another, 

 within which again is another cross mark of metallic blue. The fringe 

 of the wings is white, indented as on the upper side. The hind wings 

 are most beautifully marbled, mottled, and variegated all over, in a 

 manner that hardly admits of description, with black, brown, buff, 

 bronze, and grey, with a rather large triangular yellowish white mark, 

 with some brown in its centre, in the middle of their front margin, 

 and two heart-shaped marks some way within their hind margin, 

 somewhat like the eye of a peacock's feather, brown, margined with 



