Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/230

180 insect. The greater part of the body is green, with a large saddle-shaped yellowish-grey space on the back: numerous thick spinous elevations, garnished with strong hairs, rise both from the anterior and posterior part of the body, and along the sides there is a series of smaller ones of a pink colour. The head is extremely small, and the segments are scarcely discernible viewed from above. This caterpillar feeds on the leaves of the sweet orange. It prepares a globose-oval cocoon of light yellowish-brown silk: the chrysalis is short and contracted: the butterfly comes forth from it in six or seven days.

This singular insect is a native of Surinam. It has a very close resemblance to ''Phal. (Bombyx) Cœlestina'' of Cramer and Stoll, from the same country, but the latter is much smaller, the colouring of the surface slightly different, and the legs are bluish-black. The caterpillar, as represented by Stoll (plate 21, fig. 2), has the greater part of the body covered by a kind of shield, of a green colour, edged with yellow, on the hinder part of which are two rounded tufts of velvet black. A considerable number of similar tufts likewise exist on the anterior segments.