THE BEAUTIFUL HOOK-TIP. 85 



and Cornish coasts, wherever the food plant occurs ; but it 

 does not seem to inhabit any other part of Britain. Abroad, 

 its range extends to East Siberia and Amurland. 



HYPENIN.E. 

 The Beautiful Hook-tip {Laspeyria fiexula). 



Some specimens are browner and others greyer than that 

 shown on Plate 36, Fig. i ; the pale even lines are generally 

 edged with reddish brown, and the notch under the tip of the 

 wing is margined with the same colour. 



The caterpillar has the first and second pairs of prolegs very 

 short, and below the brown-ringed spiracles there is a projecting 

 ridge, fringed with a row of fleshy greenish-white filaments, 

 some of which are forked. Bluish-green, sometimes tinged 

 with ochreous ; raised dots, black at the tips, on a base of 

 whitish green ; along the middle of the back is a series of 

 darker green spear-points, and beyond this on each side a pale 

 line, edged above by a fine wavy black line, and below by a 

 darker green line ; the eighth and eleventh rings of the body 

 darker than the others. (Abridged from description by 

 Buckler.) It feeds on lichens growing upon larch, spruce, 

 hawthorn, sloe, fruit trees, etc., from September to May. The 

 moth is out in June, July, and August, and may be beaten from 

 the branches of trees, and from hedges, but the flushing of a 

 specimen in this way is always a more or less casual event. It 

 has been taken on several occasions at street lamps, and also in 

 illuminated moth traps. 



In England the species seems to be widely distributed over 

 the southern counties to Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire; and 

 in the east to Norfolk. It has also been recorded from Derby- 

 shire (one), and Yorkshire (two). 



The range abroad extends to Amurland. 



