Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/269

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209

ASTHENIA PODALIRIARIA, Westwood.

PLATE XXIX. Fig. 1.

In supplying us with a figure of this new species, Mr. Westwood has suggested the propriety of referring it, along with several others, to a new genus, which he names Asthenia. The species approach our English Ourapteryx sambucaria in general form and in the hind wings being tailed. From that genus, however, they differ in having the antennæ short and strongly bipectinated, and the legs as well as the body very short and weak. The fore wings are triangular, not falcate at the tip, the external margin forming nearly a straight line. The veins of the fore wings are arranged as in Ourapteryx, except that the branches both of the postcostal and medial veins arise much closer to the base of the wings. The hind wings are much more decidedly tailed than in O. sambucaria; the postcostal vein emits three branches, independently of the mediastinal vein, whereas in O. sambucaria the postcostal sends off only two branches.

The general colour of A. podaliriaria is very pale cream-colour, the fore wings having three transverse narrow brown bars across them, the first before the middle, the second behind the middle (interrupted