20 LITHOSIA (JOMPLANA. 



complana and molybdeola the similarity which is also 

 shown by their imagos ; complana is rather the larger 

 of the two, but there is in both the same figure, the 

 same arrangement of tubercles, the same sort of hairs 

 in the tufts ; in their colouring there is the same ground 

 of dead blackish-grey, the brown tubercles and hairs, 

 the velvety-black dorsal and lateral stripes, and the 

 subdorsal row of parti-coloured orange-red and white 

 spots. 



Now, in the descriptions of complana we find these 

 spots called oval ; u taches o vales " Guenee calls them ;* 

 "taches arrondies ou un peu ovalaires," f says 

 Boisduval; and, as far as we can gather from our 

 friends who are accustomed to take the larva of com- 

 plana in this country, they do not know of any other 

 shape for these spots but oval or roundish ; in the two 

 larvae of molybdeola mentioned above, these subdorsal 

 spots had no roundness whatever in their shape, but 

 were narrowish, oblong, somewhat wedge-shaped marks. 



Boisduval, in his account of complana, goes on to 

 say, " Elle varie un peu pour la couleur et pour la 

 forme des taches orangees ; quelquefois celles-ci sont 

 blanches sur tous leurs bords avec le centre orange ; 

 d'autresfois il n'y a que la partie posterieure de chaque 

 qui soit orangee. Souvent elles sont alongees ou un 

 peu triangulaires, et semblent presque former, lorsque 

 la chenille est enrepos, deux raies non interrompues ; " 

 so that we must either give up the shape of these sub- 

 dorsal spots as a point of difference, or else suppose 

 that Boisduval had seen larvae of molybdeola as well 

 as of complana. In coming lower down the side, below 

 the black lateral stripe, which comes next to the sub- 

 dorsal spots, we reach another point ; and here Bois- 

 duval fails us, for he says nothing of the side of com- 

 plana, only that " les stigmates sont peu apparents," 

 and "le dessous du corps est grisatre," and then he 

 gives the colour of the legs. Guenee is much more 



* ' Annales de la Societe Entomologique de France,' 1861, p. 50. 

 f ' Collection Iconographie et Historique des Chenilles.' 



