The caterpillar feeds on the Oleander (_Nerium oleander_), and also on the lesser periwinkle (_Vinca minor_). When full grown it is olive green on the back from the hinder part of the third ring to the small, rough, and drooping, horn; the under surface and the whole of the first three rings ochreous; there is a divided brown spot on the ring nearest the head (first thoracic segment), and two larger blue-black spots on the third ring. These spots each enclose two whitish clouds; on the front edge of rings five to nine (second to sixth abdominal segments) are whitish dots, but these are fewer on rings eight and nine than on the others; a narrow whitish stripe, edged above and below with whitish dots, runs along the sides from ring five to the horn; spiracles are black with pale margins (Plate 1). Chrysalis brown with blackish central line, which becomes broken and obscure on the body rings, broken again on the head, but continued thence along the under surface to the tips of the wing cases. The spiracles are blackish; the body is dotted, and the last rings are clouded with blackish. I have only seen a preserved example of this caterpillar and a dead chrysalis; descriptions of each are from these. The first published notification of the occurrence of this moth {47} in England is that of Stephens in 1835. He wrote: "A noble specimen of this remarkably beautiful insect (five inches three lines in expanse), was taken in the beginning of September, 1833, by a lady in her drawing-room at Dover. Whether the pupa had been imported in some of the numerous packages of foreign fruits, etc., or the insect itself had been brought over in one of the passage-vessels, is a question not easily solved. The larva feeds upon an exotic plant; but has been found in a garden near Charmouth, as appears by a subsequent communication to the _Ent. Magazine_ by Captain Blomer."