418 



The Moths and Butterflies 



familiarly known to the amateur collector and crawlery owner. And popular 

 books like Dickerson's "Moths and Butterflies," Eliot and Soule's "Cater- 

 pillars and Their Moths," etc., which tell in 

 detail of the life-history and habits of various 

 Lepidoptera, mean by "moths," first Saturnians, 

 then Sphingids, and finally a scant sprinkling 

 of "others." The giant vividly colored cater- 

 pillars, the great silken cocoons safely enclosing 

 their mystery until that day when a marvel of 



a 



FIG. 600. FIG. 601. 



FIG. 600. Venation of Clisiocampa americana. cs, costal vein; sc, subcostal vein; 



r, radial vein; m, medial vein; c, cubital vein; a, anal veins. (After Comstock; 



enlarged.) 

 FIG. 601. The American lappet-moth, Gastropacha americana. (After Lugger; natural 



size.) 



living color and pattern slowly crawls out and unfolds and takes on the 

 seeming of the perfect cecropia or polyphemus, it is little wonder that the 

 giant silkworm-moths are always never overlooking the swift and masterful 

 Sphingids the moths of popular fancy. 



Just because these moths are so well known and so well and fully written 

 of elsewhere I may limit my account of them to a brief descriptive catalogue 

 of adults and larvae with the particular aim of making the more common 

 species determinable by amateurs. The particular species in hand once 

 safely identified, details of life-history and habits can be looked for in the 

 many popular or technical accounts of the various kinds. In all, the males 

 can be distinguished from the females by their large antennae and smaller 

 bodies. In some species the sexes are very different in color and pattern. 



Of the genus Samia, the real giant silkworms, four species occur in 

 this country. S. cecropia, the great cecropia-moth of the eastern states, 

 expands 5 to 6 inches, has red thorax with white collar, red abdomen 

 banded with white and black lines, wings with grizzled gray ground, and 

 markings, as shown in Fig. 602, of reddish white and blackish with clay- 

 colored outer margins. The large discal spots on the wings are whitish in 

 the center, surrounded and encroached on by reddish, and margined with a 

 narrow black line. The full-grown larva (Fig. 604) is nearly 4 inches 

 long, pale limpid green, and bears on its back conspicuous tubercles, coral- 



