402 LEPIDOPTERA. 



an extremely slender spike without any broad or flattened base, 

 but divided at the tip into two curved and hooked bristles. 

 In a thin flexible cocoon of silk and earth, beneath the surface 

 of the ground, or among dead gi'ass leaves or rubbish. 



The moth may occasionally be found sitting in the daytime 

 on a fence, post, or wall, but doubtless hides more frequently 

 among herbage and the dead leaves of its favourite grass. 

 At night it comes willingly to sugar, but is shy and readily 

 falls or flies off. It is said to take some pains to conceal 

 itself from the observer by hiding behind a leaf or stem if 

 available while sucking the tempting bait. It also loves the 

 blossoms of Scrophularia aquatica — a dangerous temptation, 

 since they are also much frequented in the evening by belated 

 wasps — and will come occasionally to light. Not a common 

 species, and mainly confined to marshy places and the banks 

 of rivers and ditches, except where it finds a suitable home 

 in a garden. In the year 1852 it was plentiful at Putney, 

 and at Hammersmith in 1859, both places in the London 

 suburbs and now covered with houses ; but at that time and 

 for some years subsequently it was a frequent species in 

 London suburban gardens ; it then became gradually scarcer, 

 and had been long looked upon as a rare insect when, in 

 1887, its larva was discovered in an old garden overgrown 

 with ribbon-grass, since which time it has gradually become 

 much more frequent in these suburbs. Elsewhere it is found 

 in Kent, Surrey, Berks, Herts, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, 

 Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, and apparently has 

 once been taken in Durham. I find no record of its occur- 

 rence in Wales or Scotland, but in Ireland it is obtained 

 locally near Dublin, in Louth, Westmeath, Kilkenny, Galway, 

 Sligo, Armagh, and Belfast. Abroad it is also local, but 

 widely spread through Holland, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, 

 Central Russia, and the mountain regions of Central Asia. 



END OF VOL IV. 



