72 LEPIDOPTERA. 



Pupa large and stout, of ordinary Noclna form, abdominal 

 segments full and tapering very little ; anal segment fully 

 and obtusely rounded behind ; cremaster very short, tri- 

 angular, armed with two very short black spikes placed 

 rather widely apart ; wing and limb-covers glossy, but 

 minutely sculptured in fine incised lines; the dorsal and 

 abdominal segments with a band of coarser pits on the 

 anterior margins ; rest of segments smooth and shining ; 

 colour dark purple-red, incisions of segments and cremaster 

 blacker. In the earth, without a cocoon, close to the root- 

 stock in which the larva fed, sometimes within the crown of 

 the root. Digging them up is neither an easy nor an 

 agreeable task, since they lie in the soft muddy soil and 

 can only be successfully obtained by working with the 

 fingers. Sometimes, when the weather is unusually dry, 

 the mud becomes so hardened that many of the moths are 

 unable to emerge and so miserably perish. 



The moth hides in the daytime in the great beds of 

 Petasiics, usually resting in or under the dead leaves, but 

 sometimes on the undersides of the living. At night it 

 flies close to the great leaves, or under and among them, and 

 is difficult to catch ; also it becomes very rapidly worn and 

 torn, from their contact, so that specimens for collections 

 are usually reared from pupae which have been discovered 

 by the agreeable process already described. It is occasionally 

 found at ragwort blossoms at night, and will come to a 

 strong light ; but sugar appears to have no attraction for it, 

 and it rarely travels far from its food plant. 



Its home in this country is in Yorkshire, Lancashire, 

 Cheshire and Durham, in the great beds of Fetasitcs which 

 grow on the river banks, often in the blackest mud of the 

 factories. Here it is sometimes abundant, and never very 

 scarce. Elsewhere I find notices of casual captures in 

 Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and at Needham Market, Suffolk, 

 and there is a record of a single specimen at Taunton, 



