PSTCHID^. 101 



" Larva -J to ^ incli long ; brown above, grey below, variegated with red and 

 yellow lines and dots ; bairy ; eacb segment with two short tufts ; behind head two 

 fleshy earlike protuberances ; a haunch upon forepart of back. Spins a light cocoon, 

 from -which the moth escapes in two weeks. 



" Feeds on the CofFee-tree, orange and other trees." 



Family PSYCHIDiE. 



Male. Wings mostly sparsely clothed with hair-like scales ; some genera semi- 

 transparent ; cell traversed by a single or forked very slender veinlet : f orewing 

 either moderately long or short : hindwing short. Body pilose, abdomen extensile ; 

 palpi short, pilose ; antennee bipectinated, the branches plumose ; legs sparsely 

 pdose. Female vermiform, closely resembling the larva ; wingless, with rudimentary 

 legs and antennge; remaining in the larval case, the male inserting its abdomen 

 therein during coition. 



Larva naked ; constructs a portable silken case, which is more or less covered 

 with pieces of stems or leaves of the food-plant, in which the larva lives and under- 

 goes its transformations, the larva, previous to assuming the pupa state, fastening 

 the mouth of the case to the shrub or tree, the male larva turning so that its head is 

 pointed to the opposite end, out of which the pupa is exserted on the emergence of 

 the imago. 



" The Singalese call these larva cases Bara-hattea, or ' billets of firewood,' and 

 regard the inmates as human beings, who, as a punishment for stealing wood in some 

 former state of existence, have been condemned to undergo a metempsychosis under 

 the form of these insects." (Tennent, Natural History of Ceylon, p. 430.) 



Genus EUMETA. 

 Eumeta, Walker, Catal. Lep. Het. B. M. iv. p. 964 (1855). 

 Cryptotlielea, Walker, id. p. 970 (nee Duncan). 



Male. Wings clothed with short hairy scales : forewing elongated, narrow, 

 slightly arched towards the tip, exterior margin obhque ; cell long, extending two- 

 thirds the wing, narrow from the base to half its length and dilated at its end ; first 

 subcostal emitted at one-third before end of the cell, second from close to its end, 

 thu'd and fifth from slight angles at end of the cell, third bifid at half its length ; 

 discocelhilar bent in the middle, upper end recurved; radial from upper end of 

 discocellular ; a slender forked discoidal veinlet emitted within the cell ; two upper 

 median branches on a footstalk one-third beyond the cell, second at one-twelfth and 

 first or lower at one-sixth before end of the cell ; submedian recurved, with a very 

 slender branch curving upward and inward at one-third from its end and extending 



