298 



BRITISH MOTHS. 



sometimes two darker bars, parallel with the 

 hind margin : in some specimens I find 

 scarcely any trace of these bars; but there 

 is always a slender dark brown line on the 

 extreme margin : the hind wings of the 

 female are clouded with smoky brown : the 

 head and thorax have exactly the same colour 

 as the fore wings ; the body is pale dingy- [ 

 brown. 



" The EGG is at first pale straw-colour, soon 

 turning pale purplish brown, and again 

 becoming dingy-gray a long time before the 

 caterpillars appear : this is singular, for the 

 last change of colour usually precedes the 

 hatching of the caterpillar but a few days 

 or hours at the outside. The CATERPILLAR at 

 first is a little dingy fellow, but after a moult 

 or two, puts on the gayest dress worn in ail 

 its existence, becoming of a clear full green, 

 with white medio-dorsal, sub-dorsal, and 

 broader spiracular Hues." Thus writes the 

 Rev. John Hellins, one of our very best 

 observers, in the Entomologists' Monthly Ma- 

 gazine, vol. iii. p. 212. In June, 1866, I 

 received some of the full-grown caterpillars 

 from a friend who dug them up in a meadow 

 which had been completely laid waste by the 

 ravages of caterpillars, and had assumed the 

 appearance of a scorched desert : the cater- 

 pillars of an Agrofr' hereafter to be described 

 were the main age ^ts in this devastation, but 

 they were intermixed with others more at- 

 tractive in appearance, which subsequently 

 proved to be those of Luperina Cespitis. The 

 head of these was rather narrower than the 

 second segment, the face flat, and the whole 

 glabrous; the body is almost uniformly cylin- 

 drical, but slightly decreases in bulk towards 

 each extremity ; on the second segment is a 

 semi-circular glabrous plate, and there is 

 another on the thirteenth segment ; the 

 colour of the head is dingy-brown, and that 

 of the two dorsal plates is darker brown, the 

 rest of the dorsal surface has a metallic 

 bronze-like lustre with five dingy-white 

 stripes, one of them medio-dorsal, the others 

 lateral ; the ventral surface and claspers have 

 a semi-transparent greenish tint; the legs are 

 corneous as usual, and of a rather darker 



colour. It feeds on grass, and exclusively by 

 night, either burying itself in the earth or 

 hiding at the roots of the grass by day; about 

 midsummer my specimens finally entered the 

 earth and formed themselves earthen cells, 

 without any perceptible admixture of silk or 

 gui , and in these they changed to shining 

 red- brown CHRYSALIDS, having an anal spike 

 forked, or, perhaps, more properly speaking, 

 bearing two sharp bristles at the extremity. 



The MOTH appears on the wing in August, 

 and, although never abundant, has been oc- 

 casionally met with in many of our English 

 counties, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Surrey, 

 Essex, Suffolk, Worcester, Lancashire, York. 

 Mr. Birchall informs us it is abundant on the 

 Irish coast near Dublin. (The scientific name 

 is Luperina Cespitis.) 



495. The Crescent-striped (Mamestra abjecta). 



495. THE CRESCENT-STRIPED. The an- 

 tennae are rather long, and almost simple in 

 both sexes ; the palpi are curved upwards, 

 naked, and widely-separated at the tips : the 

 fore wings are rather long, rather narrow, and 

 slightly waved on the hind margin ; their 

 colour is dingy brown ; the orbicular spot is 

 oblong and oblique, its border whitish, and 

 rendered more conspicuous by the dark, but 

 narrow, area immediately around it; the 

 reniform is irregular, its colours the same as 

 those of the orbicular, except that it has two 

 white dots at its lower exterior extremity ; 

 beyond this are two oblique transverse paler 

 lines, the outer of which is zigzag, and the 

 inner is accompanied by several dark lunules, 

 and there are three, as is usual in this tribe, 

 rather conspicuous pale dots on the costal 

 margin near the tip ; the hind wings are pale 

 grayish-brown, with darker wing-rays and 

 hind margin, and paler base ; the head and 



