the leading characteristics of both continents, i. e. Africa and Asia; a remark in which all who have examined the insects of the two countries will not, we think, hesitate to concur.[1]
As far as we are acquainted with them, the caterpillars of this group are pretty similar to each other, having smooth skins, generally of a yellow or green colour, with transverse rows of tubercles of a different colour from the body. Considerable variations, however, from this typical form, are observable in many of the species. The caterpillar of A. erythrinæ, for example, is even more anomalous than the perfect insect, affording one of the most remarkable instances with which we are acquainted of important changes at different periods of development. If we may place full confidence in the figures which have been given of it, after having attained a certain stage of its growth, it is either yellow spotted with black, the head, legs, anal segment, and caudal horn ferruginous; or it is black, with the parts just mentioned ferruginous; or, finally, it is yellow with broad black rings. In all these modifications as to colour, it bears four very large black spines behind the head, and two others near the hinder extremity,[2] When full grown, all these spines fall off with its last change of skin, and the caterpillar is either black, yellow mottled with
