6 LEPIDOPTERA. 



or violet ; head green ; its lobes edged with yellow; legs pinkish- 

 brown ; pro-legs green, edged below with pink ; horn blue. 

 Mr. Buckler has figured a beautiful variety of the larva, 

 having a subdorsal row of red spots on each side. When 

 very young the head is rounder, the horn pink, and there 

 are faint traces of dorsal and subdorsal lines, while the 

 oblique stripes are scarcely visible, and the body has numer- 

 ous rather long slender hairs or bristles. When young it 

 eats away the leaf of its food plant on both sides of the mid- 

 rib, using the latter as a resting-place. At all ages, when at 

 rest, the fore part of the body with the head is raised and 

 rather drawn back in a curve. When well grown it rests on 

 the stem or on a leaf of the food plant, but clears off every 

 leaf from the tip of the spray which it has chosen. 



On willow, sallow, apple, crab, white Ontario poplar, and 

 even wild plum and many Eosaceous plants, but probably the 

 various species of 8alix, and the apple are the most favoured. 

 June, July, August, September. 



Pupa stout, smooth, glossy, dark purple-brown, with slight 

 projections at the anal extremity. Subterranean, but only 

 just beneath the surface, in a large cocoon of earth, very 

 slightly held together with silk. 



The moth flies rather slowly and heavily at dusk, and 

 again, and more swiftly, later in the night, and is not uncom- 

 monly attracted by a strong light. In the daytime it sits 

 among bushes or on the side of a hedge with its fore wings 

 falling back and hind wings forward, so as to show a broad 

 edge in front, and bears a striking resemblance to a spray of 

 two or three dead leaves hanging down. 



Moderately common in the south and east of England, and 

 westward as far as Devon, though scarcer in Cornwall ; locally 

 common in other parts of England as far as Cheshire, Lan- 

 cashire and ^'orkshire. and found more rarely northward to 

 the districts of the Tweed and Solwav in the scuth of Scotland. 



