226 LF.riDOPTEKA. 



cream-coloured, nuited by a visible whitish tracheal thread ; 

 below these the sides and legs watery translucent grey-green, 

 very pale, and like the rest of the skin, brilliantly glittering. 

 (W. Buckler — condensed.) 



September and October, till April or May ; on various 

 species of dead-nettle (Lamium), wound-wort (Stachys), wood- 

 sage, stinging-nettle, common campion (LyrJniis), marjoram, 

 dog's-mercury, honeysuckle, elder, bramble, elm, and probably 

 many other plants, drawing together leaves, and living on 

 their undersides ; eating the leaves ; passing the winter upon 

 the plant in a white silken hybernaculum at the edge of a 

 leaf. 



Pupa rather slender, tapering to each extremity ; eye-covers 

 prominent ; wing, antenna, and leg-covers long ; back of the 

 abdomen keeled on the four upper segments, and having a 

 row of minute raised dots on either side ; spiracles prominent, 

 cremaster furnished with two curly-topped, crossing, spines ; 

 head, thorax, and wing-covers pitchy black and glossy; 

 abdomen dull, black above, brown on the sides and below ; 

 the divisions orange-ochreous. (W. Buckler.) In a silken 

 cocoon within a folded and joined portion of a leaf. 



This moth has one singular propensity. It hides during 

 the day, constantly, indeed almost exclusively, in bushes and 

 hedges of hlacktliorn {Prunus sjnnosa) — hence doubtless its 

 name. There does not appear to exist any record of the 

 finding of the larva on this plant, yet the attachment of 

 the moth thereto is notorious and self-evident, and I do 

 not remember an instance of its being found hiding among 

 any one of its numerous knovni food-plants. Wherever 

 blackthorn is found in the hedges it is abundant, easily 

 disturbedin the day-time, when it constantly returns to the 

 same dense shelter. Abundant almost throughout England, 

 Wales, and Ireland, though less common in Durham and 

 Northumberland ; and found in Scotland in Fife, Perthshire, 

 Dumbartonshire, the Clyde Valley, Argyleshire, and, curiously 



