222 LEPIDOPTERA. 



black and shining; limb and wing covers rather well marked 

 and roughly sculptured with cross incised lines, the wing- 

 covers also showing the form of the nervures at their lower 

 ends with unusual distinctness ; dorsal shield and dorsal 

 segments abundantly and generally sculptured with fine 

 pits, but the abdominal segments only so in a narrow 

 band toward the anterior edge, which is very dark, the 

 hinder portions smooth ; anal segment bluntly rounded off, 

 cremaster hardly protruding from it but armed with two very 

 divergent spikes. General colour red-brown, cremaster black- 

 brown. In a cocoon of silk and earth underground. As in 

 the rest of this genus, the moth is fully formed within the 

 pupa in the autumn. 



The moth hides in the daytime among thick herbage, but 

 has been seen, though rarely, to fly about blooming sallows 

 in the sunshine. It frequents sallow bloom and plum- 

 blossom at dusk like its congeners, but appears upon the 

 wing usually at least a fortnight later, and also flies a 

 little later at night. I have found it on the blossoms of 

 the small dense bushes of sallow in swamps more frequently 

 than elsewhere, and there it can only be collected singly by 

 the aid of a lantern, and not with the umbrella ; this, how- 

 ever, comes into use when young vigorous shoots of sallow, 

 usually with the female catkins, are blooming in marshy 

 places later than the great mass of bushes. After feeding, 

 the female moths betake themselves to the dead dry sticks 

 and seed-heads of the previous year to deposit their eggs, 

 without much regard to the species of plant ; they have been 

 found so occupied late at night on dead seed-heads of dock, 

 plaintain, nettle, woundwort, purple loosestrife, and golden- 

 rod, and in such receptacles the clusters of eggs are readily 

 gathered. 



Found in moderate numbers in damp woods and other 

 suitable places all over the southern half of England, though 

 scarce in Devon and Cornwall and very local in the Midland 



