BIRCH MOCHA. 1 39 



Dingy Mocha {Ephyra orhicularid). 



The wings are greyish, thickly striped with darker grey ; the 

 markings similar to those of the next species, but the rings are 

 nearly always reddish or purplish, and the central line is wavy. 

 {Plate 53, Figs. 4 and 5.) 



The ^%% (which, together with the caterpillar and chrysalis, 

 is figured on Plate 51) is at first bone-coloured ; later, pink dots 

 and patches appear. 



The caterpillar is bright green with three lines along the 

 back, the central one edged on each side with dark green and 

 the others wavy; the sides are blotched with pink or pale 

 purple, or sometimes whitish and unmarked ; head slightly 

 notched on the crown, pale brown, marked with darker; fore 

 legs tipped with pink. (Porritt, abridged.) In another form 

 of the green coloration, the sides are pinkish with dark-brown 

 oblique stripes; in a third the general colour is pale brown. 

 The first brood of caterpillars feeds in June on sallow and alder, 

 and a second in August and September. 



The moth appears in May and June, and again in July and 

 August ; sometimes a third brood has been reared in captivity. 

 It is less frequently met with than the other species of EpJiy7-a^ 

 even in its most favourite haunts, such as the New Forest, in 

 Hampshire. Other locaHties for it are Abbots Wood, St. 

 Leonards and Tilgate Forests, and elsewhere in Sussex ; Red- 

 stone, Haslemere, and the Croydon districts, in Surrey ; and in 

 some Kentish woods. It has also been taken rarely in Dorset, 

 Devon (^Tiverton), S. Wales, and Suffolk (Lowestoft). 



Birch Mocha {Ephyra pendularia). 



The general colour of this species (Plate 53, Figs, i, 2) is 

 whitish, more or less powdered or suffused with grey ; all the 



