19, 2 
Wileman: Japanese Lepidoptera , VI 
225 
General distribution. — Aglia tau, in the central and southern 
districts of northern Europe, eastward to Japan; not in Eng- 
land and the Mediterranean countries. Aglia tau var. japonica, 
Japan only. {Jordan.) 
BRAHMJEIDJE 
Genus BRAHMiEA Walker 
Brahmsea Walker, Cat. Lep. Het. 6 (1855) 1315. 
Brahmsea japonica Butler. 
Plate 2, fig. 11, larva, fourth ? stage; fig. 12, food plant; fig. 13, head; 
fig. 14, head, enlarged. 
Japanese names: Ibota-ga and shokko-nishiki. 
Brahmsea japonica Butler, Ent. Month. Mag. 10 (1873) 56 {mnis- 
zechii Feld.); 111. Typ. Lep. Het. 2 (1878) 17, pi. 26, fig. 3, J; 
Pryer, Trans. Asiat. Soc. Japan 12 (1883) 53, No. 194: Leech, 
Proc. Zool. Soc. London (1898) 635, No. 257; Trans. Ent. Soc. 
London (1898) 270, No. 20; MATSUMURf, Cat. Insect. Jap. (1905) 
48, No. 389; Nawa, Insect World [Konchu Sekai (Jap.)] 10 (1906) 
415, pi. 11, larva, pupa, imago ?; Matsumura, Thousand Insects of 
Japan [Nihon Senchu Dzukai (Jap.)] (1909) suppl. 1, 42, No. 
68, pi. 6, fig. 4, ?; Sasaki, Insects Injurious to Japanese Trees 
[Nihon Jumoku Gaichuhen (Jap.)] ed. 3 (1910) pt. 3, 132, pi. 225, 
larva, pupa, imago; Jordan, Seitz’s Macrolep. Faun. Pal. 2 (1911) 
228, pi. 35, fig. c, d 1 . 
Brahmsea mniszechii Felder and Rogenhofer, Reise Novara, Lep. 4 
(1874) pi. 93, figs. 4, 5. 
Brahmsea nigrans Butler, Ent. Month. Mag. 17 (1880) 110; Water- 
house, Aid 1 (1881) pi. 29. 
Jordan 29 comments on the family Brahmseidas as follows: 
This group comprises about one and a half to two dozen of highly 
peculiar but very similar species. All are large and rather clumsy moths, 
with markings so characteristic that they at once catch the eye even in 
large and mixed collections. The wing is divided into an outer half trav- 
ersed by ten parallel wavy lines, which on the forewing directly touches 
an often uniformly dark basal area, but on the forewing borders on a 
band which is sometimes modified at the inner margin to form an ocellus- 
like disc. The basal area of the forewing again contains a number of 
those peculiar parallel lines, which renders the scheme of markings so con- 
fusing, and the biological significance of which we do not yet understand. 
And as if even Nature could not carry out so complicated a pattern in 
all its details, we very often find among the Brahmaeidae unsymmetrical 
specimens in which one side bears sometimes one stripe more than the 
other, sometimes has the dots differently placed. Among a considerable 
29 Seitz’s Macrolep. Faun. Pal. 2 (1911) 227. 
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