THE VELLEDA LAPPET-MOTH. 
379 
Fig. 178. 
veiling between three narrow wavy white bands, the latter 
being marked by an irregular gray line ; the veins are 
white, prominent, and very distinct ; the bind wings are 
gray, with a white hind border, on which are two inter- 
rupted gray lines, and across the middle there is a broad, 
faint, whitish band ; on the top of the thorax is an oblong 
blackish spot, widening behind, and consisting of long black 
and pearl-colored erect scales, shaped somewhat like the 
handle of a spoon. There is a great disparity in the size 
of the sexes, the males measuring only from one inch and 
a half to one inch and three quarters across the wings, 
while the females expand from two and a quarter to two 
inches and three quarters or more. 
The caterpillar (Fig. 178, young 
caterpillar) of this fine moth I 
have never seen alive ; but one 
was sent to me, in the autumn 
of 1828, by the late T. G. Fes- 
senden, Esq., who received it from Newburvport, from a 
correspondent, by whom it was found on the 5th of August, 
sticking so fast to the limb of an apple-tree, that at first 
it was mistaken for a cankered spot on the bark.* It was 
said to have measured two inches and a half in length, but 
when it came into my hands it had spun itself up in its 
cocoon. A caterpillar of the same kind, found also on an 
apple-tree, lias been described by Miss Dix in Professor 
Silliman’s “Journal of Science.”! This observing lady 
states, that “ when at rest the resemblance of its upper sur- 
face was so exact with the young bark of the branch on 
which it was fixed, that its presence might have escaped 
the most accurate investigation ; and this deception was the 
more complete from the unusual shape of the caterpillar, 
which mi lit be likened to the external third of a cylinder. 
t ^ 
The sides of the body were cloaked and fringed with hairs. 
* See “ New England Farmer,” Vol. VII. p. 83. 
t Vol. XIX. pp. 62 and 63. 
