34 LEPIDOPTERA. 



Mason possesses specimens of the male of a pale drab, the 

 locality of which does not appear to have been recorded. 

 On the wing in May and June. 



Larva large and very conspicuous, cylindrical, densely 

 covered with short soft downy hair ; head round, velvety 

 black or dark purple-brown, lobes edged with yellowish ; 

 dorsal half of the body dark red or tawny with the incisions 

 and wrinkles of the segments deep black and the edges 

 shaded with black ; subdorsal stripe broad, black-brown, set 

 with purplish hairs ; under-surface dull dark-brown, legs and 

 pro-legs similar ; hairs of the upper portion red-brown, dark 

 brown below, still lower purplish-grey or blackish. When 

 young much less hairy, dark purple-brown, with a yellow bar 

 half way round each segment, giving the creature a ringed 

 apijearance above. 



June to April. On heather and other species of heath, 

 bramble, willow, sallow, strawberry, Rosa spinosissima, 

 Vaccinmrn riiyrtilhis, Geranium sanguincutn, Erodmm 

 cicutarium, Polygonum avicularc and other low-growing 

 plants. It feeds vigorously through the summer, becoming 

 full grown in the late autumn, when it reposes at full length 

 on any plant or on the ground in the sunshine, and is 

 extremely conspicuous where abundant. Apparently it does 

 not strictly hybernate, but hides on or in the ground in severe 

 weather, coming out whenever the sunshine is bright and 

 warm ; this is, at any rate, the case from January onward, 

 but it seems hardly to feed at this time, and when finally 

 roused by the warm spring weather it takes no food at all, 

 but basks in the sunshine, or travels in a restless manner as 

 though seeking a place for pupation. 



Pupa thick, round and rather short, anal segment extremely 

 blunt, but showing anal structure with unusual distinctness ; 

 black-brown, with wing and limb-covers sooty black. In a 

 large loose cocoon of considerable length and of thin tough 

 texture, totally unlike those of the other two species, blackish- 



