LARENTID.-E—EUPITHECIA. 85; 



margin edged with short black streaks ; cilia pale smoky- 

 brown spotted with darker. Female similar. 



Undersides of the fore wings smoky-grey ; costa clouded 

 with smoky-black, which is broken beyond the middle by pale 

 bars ; discal spot black, followed by an obscure paler band. 

 Hind wings whitish-bi'owu, thickly dusted with black, and 

 four times banded with aggregations of black atoms ; central 

 spot black. Body and legs brown. 



Rather subject to local or climatal variation. Those 

 from which the above description is taken were from Perth- 

 shire ; those from the Pentlaud Hills, near Edinburgh, are 

 often of a lighter purplish-brown, but pass through various 

 shades to nearly black, always being of a rather small size ; 

 while a rather large variety from Southern English localities 

 is of a decidedly lighter umbreous, without any purplish 

 tinge, and having little or no trace of the white edgings to 

 the transverse lines. All these forms shade one into the 

 other in intermediate localities ; but the last-named was at 

 one time believed to be a distinct species under the name of 

 E. urccuthata. A race of even more striking forms exists in 

 Sutherlandshire, having no trace of purple-brown colour, but 

 being dark <jreii ; in some cases with the pale lines visible — 

 two complete rippled whitish transverse lines in the central 

 space and two more immediately outside the second line — or 

 in other instances these whitish lines are partially or quite 

 obliterated, the usual " first " and " second " lines becoming 

 distinct and black, enclosing a central smoky-black band, 

 down the middle of which is a blacker central line; some- 

 times also the spaces outside this central band are distinctly 

 paler — a very striking and remarkable series of forms — in 

 other specimens there is hardly a trace of dark lines or of 

 rippled pale ones, and the fore wings are simply dusted with 

 darker grey, the cilia being dashed with the same. There is 

 a wonderful jjarallelism between these forms of the present 

 species and those hereafter to be noticed in the case of 

 E. sattjrnta. 



