
i 80 BRITISH MOTHS 
| a slight cocoon of silk mixed with leaves, fastened on the stem of the trees on which the larve feed. I have 
adopted Hiibner’s generic name to avoid the confusion which the employment of the name Episema * produces, 
& | having been intended by Ochsenheimer for a genus of Noctuide, for a group of which it is still retained by 
| | Boisduval. . 
| | 3 
| | | : SPECIES 1.—DISPHRAGIS CHRULEOCEPHALA. Puate XVI., Fie. 4 and 4. 

Synonymes.—Phal. Bomb. ceruleocephala, Linneus; Albin, pl. | Donovan, vol. 3, pl. 100 ; Stephens (Episema cer.) ; Wood, Ind. Ent. 
13, fig. 17, a—e; Wilkes, pl. 12; Harris, Aurelian, pl. 30, fig.a—d ; pl. 5, fig. 13. 
This species varies from 1} to 13 inch in the expanse of the wings, which are of a greyish brown, with the 
. || base and extremity reddish ; the middle of the wing being occupied by a rather bluer patch, separated before 
nH and behind by a black, very irregular, waved line, and enclosing two large white kidney-shaped spots united 
together, each constricted in the middle, and having a greyish interior, so as to give the appearance of the 
. | | figure 8: the margin has a slender dark line. The hind wings are very pale buff, with a black streak near the 
ih, | | anal angle. 
The caterpillar is lead-coloured, with pale luteous, longitudinal lines, and black dots. It feeds in May on the 
sloe and whitethorn; and the moth appears in August, being an abundant species. 
The remainder of the insects in Plate XVI. are very anomalous in their structure, and of which the natural 
| 
1 | | - relations are very difficult to determine. In my “ Modern Classification of Insects ” (Generic Synopsis, p. 91,) 
| 

A Hh | I arranged them at the head of the sub-family Arctiides (or the family Arctide of Stephens) with the observa- 
ei | tion that they were nevertheless by no means to be considered as typical of such sub-family (as such a situation 
would indicate them to be), but that they were there placed in order to maintain the passage from the slender- 
1 ey bodied tiger-moths to the Lithosiide unbroken ; whereas in Stephens’s arrangement they interrupt this chain ; 
| | | | whilst in Curtis’s Guide they are thrown out of the family after the Lithosiide. The difficulty is produced by 
1 | attempting on paper to trace a linear series of relations—overlooking the numerous relations (extending in divers 
directions) which the views of various recent naturalists have so satisfactorily shown to exist, but which each 
has so dogmatically insisted upon controlling by his own “ natural system.” More than one of these systems has 
Par TR 
re been applied to the order Lepidoptera, and with as little success as our absolute ignorance of so many of its 
contents might have led us to anticipate. 
APODA +t, Hawortn. LIMACODES, Larremze (vars). HETEROGENEA, p. Kwocn. 


This singular genus, together with the next, which Mr. Stephens has separated from it, differs from all the 
other genera of moths in the structure of the larve, which resemble woodlice, and are destitute of feet. 

* Both Ochsenheimer’s and Hiibner’s names appeared in 1816. On account, therefore, of the more accurate views of Hiibner, it is more 
correct to adopt his name, 
+: Derived from the Greek, and alluding to the want of feet in the caterpillar state. Latreille’s barbarous name, Limacodes, (compounded of 
the atin word limax, a snail, and the Greek termination indicating resemblance), has, notwithstanding its much later date, been adopted both 
by English and French authors, I have great pleasure, therefore, in restoring to my old instructor’s generic name Apoda, its right of priority 
over that of Latreille, although it would, perhaps, be still more correct to give Testudo as the type of Knoch’s genus Heterogenea, and a new 
— « +. 7, ae 
en 
generic name (if reaily necessary) to Asellus. 

(ae oN, weg 
3 
————_ 

