Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/235

183 HELICOPIS GNIDUS.

PLATE XXIV. Figs. 1 and 2, Fem.

genus Helicopis was proposed by Fabricius in his Systema Glossatarum, and he refers to the species above mentioned as one of its typical forms. Although its characters are sufficiently distinctive, it was long confounded with other groups to which it has little relation. It belongs to that section of the diurnal lepidoptera in which the caterpillars are short and depressed, having some resemblance to an oniscus, whence they are called onisciform. The palpi are rather long and slender, and the terminal joint is nearly naked or free from scales. In Helicopis the antennæ terminate in a slightly curved club: the anterior legs are much shorter than the others and clothed with hairs; hinder margin of the anterior wings convex and entire, the corresponding margin of the posterior with six linear tails, the central one much longer than the rest; discoidal cell of the posterior wings open behind; claws very minute.