In June the Lunas awake from their death-like slumber, burst asunder
their silken cerements, having at first made loose the compact threads
by a fluid-ejection, and come out into the world in all the freshness
and glory of a new and untried existence. Their wings, which expand
from four and three-fourths to five and one-half inches, are of a
delicate light-green color, the hinder ones being prolonged into a tail
of an inch and a half or more in length. Along the anterior margin
of the fore-wings is a broad purple-brown stripe, extending also
across the back, and sending downwards a little branch to a glittering
eye-like spot near the middle of the wing. These eyes, of which there
is one on each wing, are transparent in the centre, and encircled by
white, yellow, blue and black rings. The hinder borders are more or
less edged with purple-brown. All the nervures are very distinct, and
pale-brown in color. Near the body the wings are thickly invested with
long white hairs. The under sides, excepting that an indistinct line
runs along the margin of both wings, are like to the upper. As for the
body, the thorax is white, occasionally yellowish or greenish, and
coursed by the purple-brown stripe that traverses the entire length
of the upper edge of the wings; and the abdomen, similarly colored,
and clothed with white, wool-like hairs. The head is small and white,
and furnished with broad, flat and strongly pectinated antennæ, which
are very much wider in the male. The legs are purple-brown, and poorly
adapted for walking, but this defect is largely compensated for in
the wide stretch of wings, that fit their possessor for powerful and
long-sustained flight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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