QUADRIFID.E. 271 



even with a strong yellowish tinge, dorsal stripe yellow, 

 enclosing a fine paler line, the subdorsal lines dull bluish, 

 bordered with smoke colour, and enclosing fine pale grey 

 lines ; below this is another irregular pale grey line followed 

 by a bluish line edged with smoke colour ; spiracular stripe 

 yellow, rust-red, or pink. The colours vary considerably in 

 different examples, in some the blue side stripes being barely 

 discernible. (G. T. Porritt.) 



July and August on various trefoils — Medicago Iwpulina, 

 Trifolium pratense, T. repens, Onobrychis sativa, and other 

 species — feeding during the night, remaining during the 

 day extended along the stalks of its food-plant. 



Pupa of the ordinary shape but rather thick and blunt ; 

 colour deep purplish-brown, with the spiracles and segmental 

 divisions darker. Powdered over with a violet bloom, more 

 especially so on the head, thorax, and wing-cases. In a 

 cocoon consisting of fragments of its food-plant or other 

 rubbish firmly spun together with closely-woven silk. In 

 this condition through the winter. 



The moth flies naturally in the sunshine and settles 

 occasionally upon flowers, but much more frequently in 

 patches of trefoils, especially in masses of hop-trefoil growing 

 upon railway banks, and among luxuriant vegetation in 

 damp fields. It seems to sit in the sun in preference to 

 flying, but starts up at the smallest alarm, to settle again at 

 no great distance, and only flies voluntarily to any extent 

 when the weather is very still and warm. So far as I know, 

 it never moves at night. Its favourite haunts are the banks 

 and wet meadows just mentioned, the edges and sides of 

 woods, fens, marshes, and quarries, and sometimes clover- 

 fields, but it is rather apt to attach itself to restricted and 

 favoured sunny spots. In this manner it is moderately 

 common throughout the South of England to Essex, Cambs, 

 Oxfordshire, Bucks, and Gloucestershire, and is found in 

 smaller numbers in Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Suffolk, 



