PHVC/r/D.-E—MVELOIS. 21 



similar; anal plate small, not so conspicuously black ; seg- 

 mental divisions well marked ; skin rather soft, with a semi- 

 transparent appearance, very pale olive-green, inclining to 

 drab ; a darker shade of the ground colour, broadly bordered 

 •on each sifie with dull whitish stripes, forms the dorsal 

 •band ; subdorsal stripes white, but there are no spiracular 

 lines ; spiracles round, black, as also are the raised dots and 

 hairs ; ventral surface and prolegs very pale dingy greyish- 

 green ; the legs black and polished. (G. T. Porritt.) 



September till May on various large species of thistle — 

 Onoporduin acanthium, Carduus lanceolatus, and ('. nutans, 

 but particularly the first named ; feeding when young in 

 the thistle heads, afterwards in the stems, hybernating in 

 the latter, and eating out considerable galleries in the white 

 pith of the largest dry stems. Abroad it is said also to feed 

 on Echium and Imda. 



Pupa long and slender ; tlie eye, leg, and antenna-cases 

 prominent, the last especially so, lying as a thickened ridge 

 ■down the front of the wing-covers, and notched on each side 

 with the interstices of the joints ; wing-covers long, narrow, 

 and rather depressed ; all these surfaces smooth and brilliantly 

 glossy ; dorsal and abdominal segments also glossy, but sculp- 

 tured with minute pitting, except a smooth band on the 

 hinder edge of each ; very little tapering, and the anal seg- 

 ment bluntly rounded off; cremaster rather swollen, fur- 

 nished with several fine hooked bristles ; pale brown, darker 

 brown on the back and at the segmental divisions. In a 

 delicate net-like silken cocoon, in a cavity, in the pith of the 

 thistle-stem ; a round hole in the bark of the stem being 

 prepared for exit. By these round holes it is readily found 

 in the dead stems of the old thistles; several pup;e ordinarily 

 occupying one stem. 



The moth sits during the day upon growing thistles, and 

 when so at rest on the upper side of a leaf is singularly pro- 

 tected from observation by the resemblance of its shining 



