TRIFIDAl. 2 °3 



is hardly any moth more deceptive in appearance. The 

 large white blotch shown when the wings are shut together, 

 with the dark dusting and lines in its margin, has so abso- 

 lutely the appearance of a patch of white lichen that one 

 may look straight at it and be unable to realise that it is a 

 moth. This, and the activity and suddenness of its first 

 movements into the undergrowth, where the latter is 

 present, serve as a considerable protection from capture. 

 When it sits, as is often the case, between the dead lower 

 branches of young firs, it usually contrives to elude the net. 

 Where the fir-trees are large it is more readily secured, and 

 those which sit out of reach may be induced to dart down by 

 the blow of a heavy stick on the trunk. In the South-west 

 of Ireland it is said to avoid the fir-trees and to sit upon the 

 stems of Myrica gale (sweet gale), and the common bracken 

 fern, at the edges of the bogs. With us it is certainly most 

 attached to those woods which are surrounded by, or mixed 

 with, heath, and which have damp marshy spots full of stiff 

 hard grasses. 



In such spots it is abundant in the New Forest and Wool- 

 mer Forest, Hants, in Surrey, and Berks ; also found in more 

 moderate numbers in Kent, Sussex, Dorset, around Dartmoor 

 and elsewhere in Devon ; rare in Cornwall ; not very common 

 in Somerset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Oxfordshire, and 

 Cambridgeshire ; more so in Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk ; and 

 local in Worcestershire. I find no records for the Midlands 

 nor for any locality north of those here noted. At one time 

 it occurred in the immediate neighbourhood of London on 

 the Kentish side, but has now disappeared from that district. 

 In Wales it is found in Glamorganshire, and there is a record 

 from North Wales. In Ireland abundant in the bogs of 

 some parts of the County of Kerry, but apparently not 

 otherwise noticed. Its range abroad is through Central 

 Europe, Northern Italy, Sicily, Corsica, Livonia, Southern 

 Kussia, Armenia, the mountain regions of Central Asia, and 

 Japan. 



