Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Butterflies Vol 1).djvu/29

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 * Hestia, Hübner, Verz. bek. Schmett. 1816, p. 15.
 * Nectaria, pt., Moore, Lep. Ceyl. I, 1880, p. 2.

Type, H. lyncea, Drury, from the Malay Peninsula.

Range. The Indo-Malayan Region.

Wings comparatively of large expanse, body long and slender. Fore wing elongate and narrow or comparatively short and broad; dorsum slightly sinuous; termen oblique, slightly concave below the rounded apex; costa nearly arched; cell more than half length of wing; upper discocellular short, middle inwardly oblique, deeply concave, lower outwardly convex; vein 11 anastomosed with vein 12. Hind wing elongate, obovate, or ovate; termen more or less strongly arched; cell more than half length of wing; discocellulars obtusely angulate one with the other. Antennæ long, filiform, scarcely clavate towards apex; palpi erect, flattened outwardly, clothed with appressed scales, third joint short, pointed, slightly porrect; claws of intermediate and posterior legs curved, furnished with paronychia and pulvilli.

Larva. “Cylindrical, naked, banded with several transversely alternating conspicuous colours; furnished with four pairs of long filamentous processes or tentacula” (Moore).

The forms of Hestia are very closely allied, but are divisible into two groups:—

The lyncea group, to which all but one of the Indian races belong, characterized by an elongate narrow wing and large black markings on the white ground-colour; and the Javan belia group, with wings broader in comparison with their length and small black markings. The sole Indian representative of the latter group is H. linteata, Butler, extending from the Malay Peninsula into the extreme south of Tenasserim.

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