422 LEPIDOPTERA. 



prolegs spotted and tipped with dark-brown. (AV. Buckler — 

 condensed.) 



August or September till May or June ; on furze ( Ulex 

 turopeus) feeding in the young shoots, buds, and blossoms, 

 and lying concealed in a silken tube, from wbicli it some- 

 times emerges to sun itself ; also hybernating in the tube. 

 Later the tubes are somewhat concealed by numerous silken 

 threads passing from twig to twig in a confused manner. 



Pupa apparently undescribed. In the larval silken habi- 

 tation. 



This moth furnishes a remarkable instance of deceptive 

 resemblance. As it sits on the end of a broken bit of furze 

 it looks precisely like a short bit of the dead stick of that 

 plant ; the deception being heightened by the rough scales 

 of the head, which stand out exactly like the broken fibres of 

 a snapped-oS" twig. 



The first certain notice of this species here was in 1871, 

 when fifteen specimens were captured, during lieavy rain, in 

 the Isle of Wight, by Mr. W. E. Davis — doubtless beaten out 

 of furze-bushes, though nothing is said as to the method of 

 capture — these were recorded under the name of Pcmpelia 

 alharicUa, and in another periodical under that of Fhycis 

 davisellus, N. sp. (without description) ; and it was not until 

 1875 that it was i-ecognised as a species well known on the 

 Continent under the present name and several others. In 

 all probability it is also the insect recorded in the year 1859 

 by the Eev. 0. Pickard-Cam bridge, as captured in Dorset- 

 shire, and stated by him to be Plu/cis contubcrnella, Hiib., 

 but in the absence of any description of that insect this 

 must remain doubtful. It is of little importance, since 

 contuhcrneUa is now sunk as a sjmonym of palumbclla, and 

 palumbclla is a species hardly likely to be put forward as a 

 novelty in 1859 ! 



From the date mentioned above (1871) this insect has, 

 almost every year, been taken on the South Coast, and 



