Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/118

102 bounded by these white portions, bears a small round white spot in the centre, and there is a waved white streak at the apex of the wing; the whole of the white parts are waved and clouded with light brown. The hinder wings are almost wholly brown, excepting the base and a few marks near the anal angle which are white; fringe of all the wings brown and white alternately. The head and thorax are variously marked with white, the latter with two small round white spots anteriorly, and a large posterior patch bearing a very faint resemblance to a death's-head; three anterior segments of the abdomen with a large yellow round spot on each side. The caterpillar (Plate VI. fig. 2) is yellowish green, the latter hue prevailing on the under side, and the former on the back and sides. There is a series of oblique stripes along the sides of the segments, consisting of a streak of white, purple, and faint blue. These are wanting in the three segments behind the head, which have two dorsal rows of reddish tubercles; tail yellow, granular. "It feeds," says Abbot, "on the fringe-tree (Chionanthus Virginica), called old-man's-beard from its clusters of white blossoms, and also on the privet and lilac. I procured several in Virginia upon the last mentioned shrub, which went into the ground July 31st, but every one of them died in the chrysalis during winter. After I had been several years in Georgia, I found some on the old-man's-beard in June, which buried themselves on the 22nd of that month, and