TRIFID^. 203 



swelling in the place of the usual broad projection ; on it is 

 a pair of minute, very divergent and hooked bristles flanked 

 by a pair of thicker, straighter, but still hooked ; around 

 these are some still more minute, and not very perceptible. 

 General colour yellowish-brown or pale orange-brown ; anal 

 tip dark brown. In a moderately tough though fragile 

 cocoon of earth and strong silk in loose soil near walls or 

 fences. In this state through the winter. 



The moth hides in the daytime in chinks or under copings 

 of walls, on fences, and among herbage, but may occasionally 

 be found, in intensely hot sunshine, flying wildly by day, and 

 feeding at flowers of Knaidia arvcnsis or Centaurea. Its 

 ordinary flight is however at dusk and through the night 

 and it then also frequents flowers and comes occasionally to 

 sugar, but more frequently to light, being strongly attracted 

 by street-lamps. More particularly attached to gardens and 

 waste ground near them, and to sandy districts, such as the 

 Breck sands of Norfolk and Suffolk, where it is very abun- 

 dant, and where I have more particularly noticed it on the 

 wing in hot sunshine. Also everywhere along the sea coast 

 where its more favourite species of Chenopodium Sixe ]Aent\.i\A. 

 Therefore rather a local species ; common in the London 

 suburbs, formerly more so than at present ; more particu- 

 larly attached to our Eastern and South-Eastern counties, 

 but locally common so far inland as Cambridgeshire, North- 

 amptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Oxfordshire ; less frequent 

 in the west, though found in the Scilly Isles and Cornwall, 

 Devon, and Dorset ; not common in Somerset and Glouces- 

 tershire, and hardly recorded in other Western counties or 

 in Wales, though it can scarcely be absent. Scarce and very 

 local in Leicestershire and Staffordshire, still more so in 

 Yorkshire, and in Cheshire there is but a single record. 

 In Scotland it is not very uncommon in the Clyde Valley, 

 and is found, though rarely, in Koxburghshire and Aberdeen- 

 shire. Its presence in Ireland is somewhat doubtful, though 



