122 BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA. 



of the two transverse lines and the hind marginal shade of the 

 forewings, and a broad parallel resemblance in the sexual differences 

 exhibited by the two species. A general uniformity of wing coloration 

 exhibits conspicuously, in both species, the nervures of the fore- and 

 hindwings, whilst the increased scaling and intense coloration, notice- 

 able at the bases of the hindwings of rubi, are also present in psidii, 

 and are further edged by an ill-developed transverse line in some of 

 the males of the latter species. In some aspects, M. psidii appears 

 to preserve a combination of the characters of M. rubi and Pachy- 

 gastria trifolii, the general shape of the wing and the ill-developed 

 white discal spot suggesting the latter. The larva of M. psidii, 

 so far as can be judged from the dried examples in the British 

 Museum collection, is rather close to that of M. rubi. The relation- 

 ship of the Metanastriid species is much more marked in the 

 females than in the males, which are, as is, indeed, usual in 

 the Lachneids, more specialised, and hence more diverse in their 

 appearance. Thus the female imagines of M. psidii and M. rubi 

 closely resemble each other, whilst the males, although con- 

 vergent, as we have shown above, present certain differences 

 such as the greater width between the transverse median 

 lines of the forewings in M. psidii, the outer of which takes 

 a decided oblique turn towards the apex of the wing, whilst 

 the presence of a small white central spot is very distinctive. 

 The outer marginal band is less developed in M. psidii than in 

 M. rubi, and the single transverse line on the hindwings of the male 

 of M. psidii fails in the female. [It may be worthy of mention 

 that O. W. Barrett observes {Can. Ent., xxxii., p. 235) that the hairs of 

 the larva of M. psidii, Salle, are barbed at the tip and very 

 irritating, in the same way as those of Holisondota propinqua, but 

 contain no poison.*] Other Metanastriid species show characters 

 that strongly suggest that the Macrothylaciids had origin within 

 the subfamily Metanastriinae. One further suspects that the 

 ancestral base of the latter was also not far from the point at which 

 the Eutrichids originated. The South African Metanastria pithyo- 

 campa and M. ferruginea (from Natal) have the space between 

 the two central lines of a different colour from that of the general 

 surface of the wing, thus turning the two lines into the margins of 

 a band ; the lines are much more oblique than in M. psidii, and 

 the remnant of the outer marginal band in the males of both 

 species rather stronger than is that of M. rubi. In these species, 

 however, the shape and shortness of the wings, the length of the 

 abdomen, and the prominence of the head in the males, give 

 them a much more Eutrichid appearance than lias M. psidii, 

 which, in turn, possesses it in some faint degree when compared 

 with M. rubi. Those species usually referred to the Metanastriids, 

 however, of which punctata, Walk., may be considered the type, 



*Sto\vell states that, being stung by the hairs of the larva of Jfac/vt/iytacia 

 rubi, the indication produced did not finally disappear until the fifteenth day 

 (Zoologist, p. 7S98), whilst South {Ent., xviii., p. 5), Sharp (/or. cit., p. 324), 

 Jenkyns (loc. cit., xix.,p. 42), Long (loc. cit., p. 45), Lawford (Ent. Mo. Mag., xxxii., 

 p. 69), Blandford (Proc.Ent. Soc. Load., Feb. 5th, 1896, pp. iii-iv), and others, draw 

 attention to the indicating properties of these hairs which arc not barbed in any way 

 and resemble those forming the urticating fur of the larva of Lasiocampa quercus. 



