IRIFIDyE. 295 



Norfolk coast, the fore wings are almost wholly black-brown, 

 while the thorax is almost entirely pale brown, except the 

 shoulders which are nearly white ; in other such specimens 

 the thorax is dark with the shoulder lappets pale and 

 conspicuous. Mr. G. T. Porritt has a male specimen with 

 the fore wings smoky-black, except the hind margin where is 

 a pale grey stripe, and in which the thorax is black with 

 pale grey shoulders. The curious whiteness of the shoulder 

 lappets is sometimes observable in paler brown specimens, 

 and of these some have the three stigmata pale and only 

 faintly outlined with black, while others are nearly devoid of 

 the usual transverse lines. These forms seem to occur most 

 frequently near the sea; in Ireland there is sometimes a 

 tendency to more reddish-brown colour. Mr. W. H. B. 

 Fletcher has a series, from the north-east of Scotland, of 

 beautiful pale grey and brown-grey colour, with the markings 

 unusually distinct — the females darker and much mottled 

 with black. A specimen from the Isle of Wight in Mr. 

 F. J. Hanbury's collection has one half the fore wings 

 nearly black, the other — the dorsal half — brown ; another 

 very pretty specimen — of a second generation, taken in 

 September — is of a clear, pale, smooth grey-brown with 

 sharply dark stigmata. Mr. G. W. Wynn has a specimen, 

 taken in Warwickshire, of a pale ochreous-brown, with 

 a strong clouding of deep velvety black, neatly stippled 

 and placed in blotches, throughout the middle of the fore 

 wings. 



On the wing in June and July and, very rarely, as a second 

 generation, in September. 



Larva rather stout, cylindrical, rugose ; all the legs short 

 and placed well under the body ; ground colour brownish- 

 grey finely freckled with a rather darker tint of the same ; 

 under surface and prolegs with a slightly greenish tinge and 

 unfreckled ; dorsal vessel hardly paler than the ground 

 colour, enclosed between two lines of darker brown ; sub- 



