TRIFID^. 375 



Aira ccesjntosa, chickweed, and other low-growing platits, 

 feeding at night, concealing itself, like its congeners, in the 

 daytime in the middle of a tuft of grass, but fond also of 

 hiding under moss on the trunks and spreading roots of trees. 

 Much attracted by sweets, and has often been known to travel 

 up the trunk of a tree to a height of four or live feet to feed 

 on the sugar placed thereon to attract moths. 



Pupa dark red, blackish on the thorax and upper part of 

 the abdomen ; enclosed in a neat cocoon of earth or moss. 

 (H. H. Crewe.) 



The moth hides in the daytime among dead leaves on the 

 ground, or at the roots of herbage ; it comes at dusk to sugar 

 in the most eager manner, and will even seem to fight with 

 A"", jpolyodon for a share, though this fighting probably 

 amounts to no more than a struggle to keep its place at the 

 feast ; certainly either of them when dashing down recklessly 

 upon the sugar-patch covered with moths suggests an idea of 

 fighting very foreign to our usual estimation of these 

 altogether harmless creatures. This species is attracted by 

 honey-dew —especially when upon nettles — and by flowers ; 

 also less freely by light ; moreover it has a vigorous flight at 

 early dawn, when it again attacks the sugar or any available 

 sweet. Principally confined to woods, greatly preferring those 

 away from the coast. In such localities common over the 

 whole of the South of England, also the Eastern and Western 

 counties, but apparently very scarce in the Midlauds, and there 

 only recorded from Staffordshire. AVidely distributed in 

 Yorkshire, and sometimes taken in Durham, Northumber- 

 land, Lancashire and Cumberland. Probably in all woods in 

 South Wales, since I have found it in Pembrokeshire. In 

 Scotland it seems scarcely to have been noticed beyond the 

 border, the only record which I find being in the Tweed 

 district ; also local and uncommon in Ireland, but found 

 rarely near Dublin, also in Wicklow, Cork, Cavaa and 

 Tyrone. Abroad it is comparatively a more southern species, 



