TRTFTD/E. 5 



over the moors. But Mr. Stott lias recorded in the Biiti>^h 

 Naturalist that the moment a wild flying male passes n 

 tuft in which a female is concealed its flight becomes slow 

 and steady as it examines the tuft, and that l)y watching 

 such a tuft hundreds of males may easily be taken. I had on 

 one occasion a more singular experience than this : the 

 moths were in full flight and passing continually, when I 

 noticed that several were running over a small mound of earth 

 like an old ant-hill, covered with short grass and a few tufts 

 of Eriopliorum. These I secured, and other specimens at once 

 came, so kneeling down to box them easily, I found that the 

 fresh arrivals in their fatuous eagerness actually ran over my 

 hands while I was boxing their companions, so many as I 

 cared for. Yet no female was there, and though I dug up 

 and examined the tufts of cotton-grass, pulling them 

 thoroughly to pieces, and also dug up the turf, no pupa nor 

 pupa-skin, nor any indication of the presence of a female, 

 could be found, though without doubt some trace of its recent 

 presence must have been perceptible to the other sex. In 

 fact the only females which I obtained at all were those which 

 climbed up and hung upon blades of grass and of cotton- 

 grass, or sprigs of heather, earlier in the evening, before the 

 flight of the males. This species is readily attracted by 

 sugar placed on the trunks of pine-trees in its haunts, or on 

 the herbage ; it also frequents heather bloom, and the blos- 

 soms of ragwort and thistles, by day as well as by night, and 

 is strongly attracted by light. In the fens, where it is rare, 

 this last is the only method by which I have known it to be 

 obtained. Especially attached to the moors and mosses of 

 the North of England, and in many of them, in Staffordshire, 

 Lancashire, Cheshire, Yoi^kshire, Durham, Westmoreland, 

 Northumberland, and Cumberland, very abundant ; less com- 

 mon in Shropshire, Lincolnshire and Herefordshire ; rare in 

 Norfolk, occurring only in the fens ; also found at Whittlesea 

 Mere before it was drained ; and there is a record of the 

 capture of two specimens in Gloucestershire. The earliei^t 



