136 HAUSTELLATA. — LEPIDOPTERA. 



in the females ; sometimes bipectinated to the apex in the males, at others 

 robust and pubescent, distinctly articulated ; head pilose : eyes small, naked : 

 thorax rather slender, pilose: wings nearly horizontal during repose, anterior 

 rather narrow, entire; posterior yellow or luteous with black fasciae: abdomen 

 slender. Larva naked, slender, half-looper, with sixteen legs, the first pair of 

 abdominal ones shortest : pupa elongate, slender, folliculated. 



Like the species of Catocala the Brephse are distinguished by the 

 beauty of their under surface and the liveliness of the colouring of 

 their posterior wings, which are generally orange or flavescent, 

 with black or dusky fascise and margins : — the concealed palpi and 

 densely pilose head (resembling those parts in the genus Poecilo- 

 campa) serve admirably to discriminate them from the others of 

 the family; the species at first blush resemble each other so closely 

 that Mr. Haworth apologizes in the following terms for the intro- 

 duction of a second species into his Lepidoptera Britannica : — 

 " Fearful of undoing, without sufficient reason, what the great 

 Lepidopterist Hiibner has established, the present article (Br_ 

 notha) is here at present retained as a species; without such 

 authority very few would have considered it as more than a slight 

 variety." But a momentary glance at the antennae of the two in- 

 sects is sufficient to convince any person of their distinctions, their 

 structure, as it has been observed, being so different that the two 

 species " will probably, by future writers, be formed into distinct 

 genera."" 



A. Antennae not submoniliform (pectinated in the males). 

 Sp. 1. Parthenias. Alis anticis fuscis, cinereo adspersis ; posticis dilute auran- 



tiacis, macula baseos, fascid media angulatd margineque nigris. (Exp. alar. 



1 unc. 1 — 4. lin.) 

 Ph. No. Parthenias. Linne. — Don. vii. pZ. 246. f. 1. Br. Parthenias. Steph. 



Catal. part \i. p. 113. No. 6430. 



Fuscous; anterior wings fuscous, sprinkled with cinereous; with several very 

 obscure cinerascent or whitish strigte, of whicli two towards the posterior 

 margin are most distinct, and arise from two somewhat lunular whitish spots 

 on the costa ; anterior to the first is a small bluish-ash stigmatiform spot with 

 a dusky margin, between which and the base of the wing, on the costa, is a 

 pale ashy spot ; posterior wings pale orange, with the base and inner margin 

 broadly black, with an angulated, and sometimes interrupted, narrow black 

 fascia in the middle reaching to the costa, and an irregular fimbria of the 

 same colour ; cilia of all the wings fuscous, slightly clouded with cinereous : 

 female paler. 



Extremely variable : in some examples (especially of the female), the anterior 



