300 LEPIDOPTERA. 



line bristles ; cremaster blunt and flattened, bristling 

 with hooked hairs. 



The moth is not very active ; it hides by day among 

 Alisma (water plantain) and neighbouring herbage, but as 

 this frequently grows in water it must fly when disturbed. 

 Like its allies it is briskly upon the wing at sunset. Some- 

 what common in fens and wet ditches, and about ponds in 

 Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex, Dorset, Cornwall, Somer- 

 set, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, 

 Cambridgeshire, Lancashire, and probably in manj inter- 

 mediate counties. In Wales in Pembrokeshire rarely, but I 

 have no records for other portions of these Islands. Abroad 

 it is found throughout Central Europe, but the confusion of 

 records and of names is somewhat serious, and interferes 

 with any definite knowledge of its distribution. 



14.. E. vectisana, Wcstvj. Expanse |- inch (lO mm.). 

 Head yellow-brown; fore wings pale or dark olive-brown 

 with a dull deeper brown central band, often obscured. 



AntenntB ciliated, dark lead -brown ; palpi and head pale 

 ochreous ; thorax brown ; abdomen dark brown with an 

 ochreous anal tuft. Fore wings narrow and small with a 

 rather rounded apex ; usually dark olive-brown without 

 definite markings, but in paler sjiecimeus pale-olive or 

 bi-ownish-white, with a faint!}' curved and rather even 

 central band which is erect, diffused, and dusted, olive- 

 brown; all the ai'ea beyond reticulated with olive-brown 

 lines ; cilia brownish-white. Hind wings purplish-brown 

 with rather pale cilia. Female in both varieties similar. 



Underside of the fore wings leaden-brown ; of hind wings 

 smoky white. 



The insect described above, as dark olive-brown without 

 definite markings, is the usual form in these Islands ; the 

 paler and more distinctly marked variety (which with us is 

 found more particularly in Wicken fen, Cambridgeshire, 

 agrees well with Continental examples, which however used 



