248 LEl'inoPTEHA. 



visits !uul ciiiijilit alxiiit ;i dozen altogether, but never saw 

 many ,it any one time, and generally missed as many as I 

 caught. The balsam grows in patches over an area of about 

 lUO yards in length and 100 in breadth, on a very steep 

 side of a hill, among loose slatey stones and moss-covered 

 rock, and generally under the shade of trees and saplings. 

 These cireumstances combined will perhaps excuse the 

 missing so many ; and several times 1 nearly sprained my 

 ankli'. 



'■ 1 generally found the moth sitting on a tree trunk, 

 though occasionally it started out of the food-plant where the 

 latter was plentiful, but I never found it sitting on a rock 

 or stone. It flies very sharply, generally over the top of 

 branches ten or a dozen feet from the ground, and settles 

 on one of the leaves, so that it is ditticult to follow, and in 

 sucli a case I generally lost it. In one instance I lost one 

 among bracken, gravel, and rubbish under the nd, and 

 believe that it feigneil death.'' 



The first specimens noticed in this country seem to have 

 been obtained by the late Mr. T. 11. Allis, in August 185G, 

 " in the Lake District," and were recognised and recorded by 

 Mr. H. Doubleday in 1861. It seems then to have been lost 

 sight of until 18G9, when one specimen was taken, and again 

 till 187(3, when J\Ir. J. B. Hodgkinson found the food-]ilan1, 

 and upon it eggs from which larviu were reared by hinisell' 

 and Mr. Wm. liuckler. From tliat time till the present it 

 has been obtained from the original and other excessively 

 circumscribed localities in Westmoreland and the extreme 

 margin of North Lancashire ; but I know of no other sjiot 

 for it in the United Kingdom, excejjt that Colonel I'artridge 

 has found the larva in a spot in North Wales, in which, as I 

 understand, the food-]jlaut is now destroyed. 



Abroad it has an extensive range, through Germany, 

 Switzerland, the Pyrenees, Livonia, the Ural ^Mountain 

 district. Eastern Siberia, Tartary, the Corea, China, Ja])an, 

 Yesso. and Sikkim in India. Several beautiful allied species 



