424 
The Moths and Butterflies 
which vary a little in male and female of promethea , are identical in this. It 
is found also only in the Atlantic states. 
The Io emperor-moth, Automeris io (PL VI, Fig. 5; also Fig. 610), ex¬ 
panse 21 to 3 inches, is the most familiar and the only eastern species of 
the four members of this genus. It can be recognized by the large blue 
and black eye-spots in hind wings and by its unmarked fore wings. The 
female has rich purplish-brown fore wings, the markedly smaller male yellow 
fore wings. The larva (Fig. 611), which feeds on trees, small fruits, corn, 
clover, etc., when full-grown is inches long, and is pale green with a 
Fig. 609.—The promethea-moth, Callosamia promethea , male. 
(After Jordan and Kellogg; natural size.) 
broad brown stripe edged with white and reddish lilac on each side, and 
has the body covered with clusters of black-tipped green branching spiny 
hairs which are very sharp and strongly stinging. The thin, irregular 
parchment-like cocoon made of tough gummy brown silk is spun under 
dead leaves or other rubbish on the ground. In Texas is found A. zelleri , 
expanse 5 inches, reddish brown, without any yellow color in hind wings; 
in Arizona A. pamina, expanse to 3 inches, with yellow around the white- 
centered black eye-spots of the hind wings; and in New Mexico A. zephyria , 
expanse to 3 inches, with brown-black fore wings and pale-brown abdomen 
broadly banded with red. 
With a single species, the maia moth, in the eastern states, and but half 
a dozen in the Rocky Mountains, desert and Pacific slope states, the genus 
Hemileuca presents a striking difference. from the other Saturnians so far 
