DELTOIDES. 385 



July and August on sallow, especially Salix caprcea, also 

 upon aspen bushes. 



Pupa shining black-brown, slender ; in an elongated silken 

 cocoon covered with vegetable refuse. In this condition 

 through the winter. 



The moth, which is very rare in this country, frequents 

 damp open woods in which sallow is abundant. Here it may, 

 in its very few favourite haunts, be found hiding, in hot 

 weather, among the long grass in damp wood paths, or else 

 in the short thick bushes of oak or sallow undergrowth which 

 spring up after the cutting of the taller wood for hop-poles 

 and other useful purposes. From these it is easily disturbed 

 in the daytime by the beating-stick, or, when hiding among 

 grass, by simply walking through it, but flies to no great 

 distance, alighting in some similar place, again to take wing 

 if disturbed. It is most alert in the afternoon from 2 to 6 p.m. 

 It certainly flies also, and probably more freely, at night, 

 since I once found a specimen sitting upon a gas-lamp at mid- 

 night. Its position then was very curious, the wings drawn 

 so closely together that the moth formed a narrow perpendi- 

 cular ridge like Cilix spinula. It has a tiresome trick of 

 changing its haunts, so that the place in which it may be 

 found for one or two seasons seems to know it no more for 

 ever — at least this is my experience in repeated visits to its 

 haunts of thirty years ago. Haworth, writing in the begin- 

 ning of this century, stated that it had formerly been taken 

 in considerable plenty, but that for thirty years it had hardly 

 been found in England until within two or three years of 

 the time when he was writing, when a very few had been 

 taken at Charlton, Kent. Bexley, Shooter's Hill, Darenth 

 Wood, West Wickham and Tenterden, in the same county, 

 and Birch Wood, Surrey, were subsequently added as locali- 

 ties. In 1858 it must have become domiciled almost in the 

 London suburbs, since I took a specimen on a gas-lamp at 

 Dulwich. In 1862 I found it at Haslemere, Surrey, and 



