82 LONDON INSECTS 



housekeepers into spasmodic jumps and flings, by 

 showing itself near a sable cloak or blanket cupboard. 



The typical London Moth is the Vapourer. It is in 

 more ways than one exceptionally interesting. In the 

 first place, unlike most of its kind, which bury their 

 chrysalises and hide themselves until after dusk, the 

 Vapourer is to be seen in all its stages without going 

 out of the way to look for it. The Caterpillar, which is 

 very pretty and curious, has slashes of pink or red, and 

 yellow pointed tufts of hair sticking up at regular 

 intervals along its back, and longer tufts of darker hair, 

 one perpendicular on its tail, the other two like 

 whiskers, horizontal, one on each side, close by the 

 head. It is to be found on the underside of the broad 

 leaves on the branches of the plane-trees which hang 

 over the paths in St. James's Park often with two or 

 three successive outgrown skins, complete with hairs 

 and tufts, on the same leaf with the living Caterpillar. 

 A little later, the same broad leaves are to be seen 

 carrying untidy webs containing a small hairy chrysalis. 

 The perfect Moth the male, that is flies in broad 

 daylight, and, as if specially designed for the consolation 

 of country- born Londoners sentenced for any reason to 

 spend an August in London, is to be seen then in 

 numbers plunging about in front of the shop windows 

 in the hottest sunshine, looking in spite of its beautiful 

 feathery antennse less like an insect than a withered 

 yellow beech leaf caught by an eddy of wind. 



But the obliging way it shows itself is by no means 

 the only thing which makes the Vapourer specially 



