212 LEPIDOPTERA. 



wettest portions of fens and marshy woods ; most partial to 

 the small thickets of alder, sallow, and Rhammis in such 

 places ; never observed in the day time, when it probably 

 hides in the thick undergrowth, but readily obtained when 

 flying at dusk at the edges of these thickets or " carrs," when 

 its flight is of a tacking, swaying character, but tolerably 

 swift. This flight is soon over ; but towards midnight it flies 

 again about the trees and is much attracted by a strong light, 

 settling down at once on the lamp, or on any neighbouring 

 object upon which the light shines, and remaining quite inert. 

 Also occasionally attracted by sugar placed on the fen plants 

 for the benefit of Noduce. Towards morning it takes a third 

 flight. 



Curtis, in his " British Entomology," relates the finding of the 

 first specimens noticed in this country, in a ditch at Horning 

 Ferry, Norfolk, before 1830. A few years later it was found 

 by the Rev. J. Landy Brown, flying commonly in the evening 

 among alders near the same spot. This locality — Horning — 

 with Ranworth Fen on the other side of the river Bure, has 

 continued to be the headquarters of the species, with us, to 

 the present time, and I found it quite plentifully in the 

 latter fen twenty years ago. Since then it has been less 

 common, especially so in certain years, but it may be found at 

 Irstead and other parts of the long stretch of narrow fens 

 on the River Bure, as well as at Brundall Fen, on the Tare, 

 below Norwich ; but, strange as it may appear, no single 

 specimen appears ever to have been taken in the fen districts 

 of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. It has, however, 

 been taken at Lakenheath, on a little fen of the river Ouse, 

 which is connected at its outlet with both the Bure and the 

 Yare. A very few specimens have been taken in a marshy 

 portion of the New Forest, in Hants, by Mr. W. H. B. Fletcher, 

 and at a marsh at Sandwich, Kent, by Mr. Charles Fenn. 

 I know of no other locality in the United Kingdom ; but 

 abroad it is found through Central Europe, Livonia, Dalmatia, 

 Tartary, and probably other parts of Asia, since a variety, 



