3o6 LEPIDOPTERA. 



rounded, not sliiuing. Body black or dark brown dusted with 

 whitish or pale yellow ; subdorsal spots enlarged and forming 

 a pair of tubercles on each segment, dark blue on the second 

 to the sixth, and deep claret-coloured on the seventh to the 

 twelfth ; dorsal and subdorsal lines whitish, ill-deliued ; head 

 yellow, much marbled with black or dark brown, and with a 

 conspicuous dark brown dash on each side of the face ; legs 

 reddish brown ; pro-legs tinged with pink or dull orange. 

 (C. Fenn.) 



April to July on sweet gale, hawthorn, elm, oak, lime, 

 willow, sallow, blackthorn and other trees and bushes, but 

 especially on apple, plum and other fruit trees. The winter 

 is passed in the ^^^ state ; after hatching, at the beginning of 

 April, the young larvae commence at once to grow steadily 

 and pretty rapidly, feeding vigorously in fine weather, bat in 

 cold or wet weather collecting together in sheltered portions 

 of the higher branches, where a slight common web is 

 constructed for temporary shelter. No larva is more 

 easy to rear in confinement. Abroad it is, in some seasons, 

 terribly destructive, stripping not only the fruit trees, but 

 the forest trees, of their leaves, and seriously retarding their 

 growth. 



Pupa rather short and stumpy, cylindrical, then tapering 

 rapidly off to the tail. Dull brown, with a few slight tufts 

 of very short hairs on the back. In a thin tough silken 

 cocoon in the interstices of bark, or in the angles of twigs of 

 trees. 



The male moth flies actively in the sunshine ; its wings are 

 hardly dry before it proceeds in eager search for the female. 

 The latter sits quietly close to the cocoon from which she has 

 just emerged, and very soon commences to lay her eggs, in a 

 mass, upon the bark or other substance upon which she may 

 be sitting, covering them carefully with the dense scales of 

 the abdominal tuft, which she detaches for the purpose. A 

 very large portion, if not the whole, are usually deposited 



