378 
LEPIDOPTEKA. 
Were it not for its regular shape, it might, when at rest, 
very easily be mistaken for a dry, brown, and crumpled 
leaf. The feelers are somewhat prominent, like a short 
beak ; the edges of the under wings are very much notched, 
as are the hinder and inner edges of the fore wings, and 
these notches are white ; its general color is a red-brown ; 
behind the middle of each of the wings is a pale band, 
edged with zigzag dark brown lines, and there are also two 
or three short irregular brown lines running backwards from 
the front edge of the fore wings, besides a minute pale cres- 
cent, edged with dark brown, near the middle of the same. 
In the females the pale bands and dark lines are sometimes 
wanting, the wings being almost entirely of a red-brown 
color. It expands from one inch and a half to nearly two 
inches. Mr. Abbot, who has figured it, states that the 
caterpillar lives on the oak and the ash, that it spun itself 
up in May among the leaves in a gray-brown cocoon, in 
which the chrysalis was enveloped with a pale brown pow- 
der, and that the moth came out in February. My speci- 
mens, on the contrary, as above stated, were found on 
apple-trees, made their cocoons in the autumn, and ap- 
peared in the winged form in the early part of the following 
summer. 
The foregoing is the only American lappet-moth, with 
notched wings, which 
is known to me ; but 
we have another much 
larger one, with en- 
tire wings. It is the 
Velleda (Fig. 177) of 
Stoll, so named after 
a celebrated German 
female, commemorated by the ancient historian Tacitus. 
This moth has a very large, thick, and woolly body, and 
is of a white color, variegated or clouded with blue-gray. 
On the fore wings are two broad dark gray bands, inter- 
Fig. 177. 
