LARENTID.-E-LARENTIA. 191 



When very young red, or brown with a red head. 



September till May, on Gnlimii vrnnn and '/. nioUinjo; 

 hyberuating while small. It feeds entirely at night and is 

 of very retired habits and most sluggish ; if disturbed will 

 lie for hours on its back, rigidly extended as though dead, 

 with the legs tucked up and the body straightened. 

 (C. Fenn.) 



The Ivev. John Hellins found that his larvas continued to 

 feed in the winter, whenever the weather was mild, and that 

 they were content to eat withered leaves when the fresh 

 leaves failed. 



Pupa rather stout, the thorax thickened and the eyes 

 prominent; abdomen tapering very gradually and ending in 

 a small blunt spike furnished with two large, and six small 

 spines with curled tips, by which it attaches itself to the silk 

 of its cocoon ; colour bright red or red-brown ; eye-covers 

 black ; abdomen darker red ; spike dark brown. In a very 

 slight silken cocoon on the surface of the ground, placed 

 under a leaf or stone. 



In the .South this s})ecies is more particularly attached to 

 the coast, and to chalk districts, oolite, and mountain lime- 

 stone ; and hides during the day in thick masses of clematis 

 and similar dense herbage, in bushes and hedges ; also in the 

 beech-woods ; in the North it abounds in woods in the 

 mountain glens and in sheltered hedges and bushes among 

 the hills. Here it has been found to settle quietlj- down at 

 dusk to feed at the flowers of rushes. Very local, found in 

 some of the woods of Kent; at Portland and elsewhere in 

 Dorset ; in abundance near Honiton, and on the coast, in 

 Devon ; in some places on the Cornish coast, and in .Somer.set 

 and Gloucestershire; in the beech-woods of Berks, Wilts, 

 Bucks and Oxfordshire ; also in Herefordshire ; Monmouth- 

 shire, where it is common near Chepstow ; has been taken 

 at Dovedale, Derbyshire ; rarely in Cheshire, locally in 

 Lancashire; mucli more commonly in mountain districts in 



