382 
LEPIDOPTERA. 
middle, and sometimes kidney-shaped and opaque. These 
moths commonly fly towards the close of the day, and in the 
evening twilight. Their eggs are very numerous, amount- 
incr to several hundreds from a sincrle individual. 
o o 
Although the injuries committed by the caterpillars of the 
Saturnians are by no means very great, the magnitude and 
beauty of the moths render them very conspicuous and wor¬ 
thy of notice. The largest kinds belong to that division of 
the Bombyces called Attacus by Linn^us. They are dis¬ 
tinguished from the rest of the Saturnians by having wide 
and flat antennae, like short oval feathers, in both sexes, and 
by the fleshy warts on the backs of tlieir caterpillars, which 
are richly colored, and tipped with minute bristles. Pre¬ 
eminent above all our moths in queenly beauty is the Atta¬ 
cus Luna (Fig. 179), or Luna moth, its specific name being 
the same as that given by the Romans to the moon, poetically 
styled “ fair empress of the night.” The wings of this flne 
insect are of a delicate light-green color, and the hinder 
angle of the posterior wings is prolonged, so as to form a 
tail to each, of an inch and a half or more in length; there 
is a broad purple-brown stripe along the front edge of the 
fore wino;s, extendino; also across the thorax, and sendino; 
backwards a little branch to an eye-like spot near the middle 
of the wing ; these eye-spots, of which there is one on each 
of the wings, are transparent in the centre, and are encircled 
by rings of white, red, yellow, and black; the hinder borders 
of the wings are more or less edged or scalloped with purple- 
brown ; the body is covered with a white kind of wool; the 
antennae are ochre-yellow ; and the legs are purple-brown. 
The wings expand from four inches and three quarters to 
five inches and a half. The caterpillar of this moth lives on 
the walnut and hickory, on which it may be found, fiilly 
grown, towards the end of July and during the month of 
August. It is of a pale and very clear bluish-green color; 
there is a yellow stripe on each side of the body, and the 
back is crossed, between the rings, by transverse lines of 
