Caterpillar thickly clothed with soft hairs, the chrysalis suspended by the tail, and having a band round the middle.
The best known and most common species of this genus is H. Cupido, which is rather smaller than H. Gnidus. The former is commonly named the Golden-spot, and the latter the Silver-spot Butterfly. The wings of H. Gnidus, in the male, are white on both sides, with a slight tinge of yellow at the base, and the outer margin black. At the hinder extremity of the secondary wings there is a row of narrow white marks, which is double at the anal angle; tails black on both sides, the two longest ones tipped with white. The upper wings beneath have a white line dividing the black border behind the middle; and the under pair are ornamented with twenty-one silvery spots, three of which at either extremity are elongated and placed on a white ground, while the rest are insulated and on a ferruginous ground; all of them edged with black. The female is larger than the sex just described, and differs in having a larger fulvous space at the base of the wings, and in having it bounded externally on the under side of the upper pair by a wide black patch; the greater part of the surface of the hinder wings is black, and the posterior row of white crescents is simple: body white, the thorax yellow; antennæ black, ringed with white.
The caterpillar is white, and clothed with long hairs of the same colour; the head yellow, surmounted by a tuft of red hairs. It feeds on the
