igo LEPIDOPTERA. 



purple-brown transverse stripe. Hind wings white ; costal 

 region broadly dusted with purple-brown and black ; nervures 

 brownish ; hind margin faintly dusted with brown ; body and 

 legs purple-brown. 



Hardly variable except in the depth of colour of the 

 centi'al purple-brown band, which also sometimes becomes 

 complete by suffusion of the usual pale dorsal stripe. 



On the wing from the middle of May and in June. 



Larva active and rather sudden in its movements, even 

 irritable and impatient of light ; very plump, nearly cylin- 

 drical, but slightly thickest in the middle and tapering a 

 little at each extremity ; head small, rounded, very glossy, 

 pale yellow-brown freckled with black, and having an ill- 

 defined blackish bar down the front of each lobe ; colour 

 very pale olive-green, freckled and reticulated over the whole 

 surface above the spiracles, with dusting and irregular moss- 

 like markings of dark brown and dull black ; dorsal line only 

 indicated at each segmental division by a dark spot consisting 

 of an aggregation of these markings ; an obscure broad V-like 

 mark on each segment is composed of similar aggregations in 

 broad oblique lines, the apex of the V being behind ; in 

 these oblique lines is, in every case, a black dot indicating the 

 position which should be held by a subdorsal line ; spiracular 

 line formed of similar series of longitudinal cloudy markings 

 which are here terminated, leaving the whole undersurface, 

 legs and prolegs, pale olive-green ; spiracles white. 



The general colour varies to olive-brown, purplish-brown, 

 brownish-grey, and greenish-grey ; and the oblique subdorsal 

 stripes are in many examples united across the back into 

 diamond-shapes. 



July and August on broom, dyer's-greenweed, persicaria, 

 knotgrass, chickweed, and other low-growing plants, feeding 

 mainly at night, and hiding among the food plant during 

 the day. 



Pupa rather stout, the whole surface of the limb and wing- 



