228 LEPinOPTERA. 



black and shining ; body rather stout, transversely wrinkled, 

 having a corneous sliining smoke-coloured plate on the back 

 of the second and thirteenth segments, and a similar plate 

 on the outside of each of the posterior prolegs ; general 

 colour dingy white, tinged with green, and having a broad 

 dorsal, and a narrower lateral stripe darker green ; raised 

 dots minute, black ; legs and prolegs nearly concolorous with 

 the body, but rather more dusky. (I']. Xewraan.) 



Or — uniform pale primrose-yellow, without lines ; the 

 ordinary dots very small, brown ; the head and spiracles 

 also brown, and the plates tinged with that colour, (llev. J. 

 Ifellins.) 



July and August on Jlliiannllius rnsfa-ijalH (yellow-rattle)) 

 feeding on the unripe seeds, and concealing itself entirely 

 within the seed-pods. These becoming discoloured afford a 

 ready method ol' finding the larva. 



Pita small, stumjiy. honey-yellow; furnished with a short 

 cremaster. In the earth. (Hofmann.) In this condition 

 through the winter. 



The motli hides during the day among its food plant, the 

 yellow-rattle, and the surrounding grasses, in meadows, and 

 sometimes in the edges of marshes, and is readily disturbed 

 by the footstep, yet merely flutters away to a very short 

 distance to settle again. Between sunset and dusk it may 

 be seen in the same places, fluttering quietly just over the 

 top of the grass and herbage or among it, often causing the 

 whole field to have a quivering aspect fi'om its fluttering 

 multitudes. It seems never to move awaj' to any distance, 

 but hundreds of males at a time have been seen settled on 

 the grass blades, assembled around a newly-paired female. 

 Found in plenty throughout the United Kingdom wherever 

 its food plant occurs in the meadows. 



Abroad it is plentiful through Central and Northern 

 Europe, the northern half of Italy. Corsica. North-Eastern 

 Turkey, and Southern Kussia. 



