XV.—Notes on some Rhodesian Moths of the family Saturniide 
and their Larva, 
by 
Rev. J. A. O'Neil, S.J., F.E.S. 
Wirn Pratt XXIV. 
i no part of South Africa is the Family Saturniide more richly 
represented than in Southern Rhodesia. In the immediate 
neighbourhood of Salisbury alone, no fewer than twenty-eight different 
species have been found or bred from their larve, and I know of eleven 
others that have been captured in the Bulawayo, Gwelo, Hartley and 
Melsetter districts. Several of those that I have taken or bred at 
Salisbury are considered great rarities outside the territory, and the 
following notes on them and their larvee may prove of interest to 
collectors. 
I have included in the notes a crude and merely provisional 
description of three species that are probably new, and have pointed 
out in what respects the male (hitherto unknown) of the beautiful 
Nudaurelia carnegiei, described by Janse in these Annals last year,* 
differs from the female. 
With the exception of Lobobunea sp. nov. ?, Nudaurelia carnegiet 
and WV. arabella sub-sp. jacksont, all the Salisbury Saturniide are 
represented in the collection of the Durban Museum. 
IMBRASIA EPIMETHEA, Drury, sub-sp. ERTLI, Rebel. 
This is an abundant moth round Salisbury and on the Chilimanzi 
Reserve between Umvuma and Victoria; and I have seen numbers 
of the larve on their food-plant at Umtali. These caterpillars, which 
are gregarious, are known to the Mashonas as ‘‘ madora,” and are 
highly esteemed by them as an article of diet. They are found on two 
leguminous trees, Brachystegia randii and brachystegia sp. as many 
as two to three hundred being sometimes seen on a single tree. They 
are much parasitised by ichneumon flies and a great many fall victims 
to ants and other enemies when they leave the tree to go to earth, 
* Supra p. 78, 
(149) 
