I40 LEP/DOPTERA. 



aud disinclined to move ; when compelled to do so it 

 generally drops from its food-plant, suspended by a thread. 

 (E. Newman.) 



June and the beginning of July, and a second generation 

 at the end of August and in September ; on barberry (Herberis 

 ritft/aris), but so far as 1 can ascertain, not upon the cultivated 

 species of Berhcns or Mohonia. 



Pupa thick, shortened, yellow-brown, thin-skinned and 

 weakly punctured, shining ; cremaster short, knobbed, having 

 four points on the sjiike, and two smaller ones on the sides 

 (Hiigenliofcr). In a slight cocoon in the earth. In this 

 Cdndition through the winter. 



The habits of the moth are similar to those of its congeners 

 and it is almost confined to hedges in which barberry grows. 

 Possibly at one time widely distributed in this country, but 

 exterminated in some of its localities by the destruction of 

 its food-plant in consequence of the injurious influence which 

 a microscopic fungus (^'j'ft/o) growing upon it exerts upon 

 adjacent wheat crops. This appears to have been the case 

 in Norfolk, and probably elsewhere, for there is a record of 

 the capture of the species at Glanvilles Wootton, Dorset, in 

 the year 1823, since which it has there apparently disappeared, 

 and J\Ir. G. T. Porritt tells me that it was formerly found in 

 a barberry hedge near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, but has 

 now been lost, the hedge having been replaced by a stone 

 w.'ill. At present the range of the species in these Islands 

 appears to be limited to Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, 

 and Somerset, but in some of these counties it is locally 

 common. 



Abroad it has a wide distribution, through Central Europe, 

 ^Middle and Northern Italy, the northern Balkan States, 

 Eivonia, Bithynia, Armenia, the Central Asian mountain 

 regions, Canada, and Nova Scotia. 



