264 LEPIDOPTERA, 



sallow, rose, and bramble, on heaths, but in cultivated ground 

 on thistle, dock, sorrel, plantain, ragwort, and low plants 

 generally. It has been fed up, in confinement, on poplar. 

 It feeds by day, and revels in the bright sunshine. 



Pupa elongate, anal extremity blunt and fringed with 

 minute bristles ; colour blackish with a purplish tinge at the 

 incisions. In an elongate, compact cocoon of thin papery 

 silk, spun up in a slight crevice in the face of a rock, among 

 stones, etc. (Charles Fenn). Dr. Chapman says that at the top 

 of the cocoon a weak place is left for emergence, silk being 

 there rather sparingly used, though bits of external rubbish 

 are brought closely together. He also remarks that the 

 cocoon often has bits of burnt heather attached to it — though 

 why larva? should select places where the heather has been 

 burned is not quite clear. Probably they like either the 

 young shoots of heather or the low plants which soon begin 

 to cover the burnt places. In the pupa state through the 

 winter. 



This species does not appear to have been noticed in these 

 islands till the year 1846, when specimens were obtained in 

 Perthshire by Eichard Weaver of Birmingham, then a well- 

 known collector for sale. Probably this indicates that, up to 

 that time, very little had been done in working out the 

 Lepidoptera of Scotland, since it is there a very well known 

 and widely-spread species, not only on the moors and 

 mountains of Perthshire, where it sits in the daytime upon 

 the rocks and large stones, but in Ayrshire, Dunoon, and 

 other parts of the Clyde district ; also in Argyleshire on 

 moors ; and in Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire, where it 

 is common in the cultivated districts, by the road sides, and 

 along the coast, and may be found sitting on walls and 

 palings ; also throughout the Northern counties to Suther- 

 land shire. In mountain districts it reaches an altitude of 

 2000 feet above the sea level. In Ireland it is rare, but 

 recorded in the counties of Cork, Kerry, Galway, and Sligo, 



