PUSS AND PROMINENT MOTHS 



but it needs a practised eye to discover it. The imago is 

 light grey in colour, with prominent brown veins, and the 

 head is covered with fluffy material which accounts 

 presumably for its popular name. The device adopted 

 inside the cocoon, so as to enable the perfect insect to 

 make its safe exit, is very interesting. Care is taken to 

 ensure that the head end of the cocoon shall be so con- 

 structed as to show the least resistance when emergence of 

 the imago is due, and even the pupa has an apparatus by 

 means of which it can lend a hand to its later self by 

 partly cutting a hole ready for the final escape. 



Pebble Prominent. — {Notodonta ziczac.) This small 

 species is of common occurrence in Britain, but prefers 

 water-logged areas where there is a plentiful supply of 

 herbage. It may be expected upon the wing in May and 

 June, and the usual food-plants are poplar, sallow, and 

 willow. The ochreous-grey larva may, or may not, 

 have a pinkish or yellowish tinge ; there is a stripe of 

 yellow down the back, and a dark Hne along the sides. 

 The reddish-brown pupa is hidden below ground in a 

 cocoon made of earth. The imago is various shades of 

 brown on the forewings, with light greyish hind wings 

 in the male, and darker in the female. 



Coxcomb Prominent. — [Lophopteryx camelina.) This 

 light brownish moth is a very common species, and is 

 given to considerable variation. It is first on the wing 

 in May and June, and haunts beech, birch, hazel, oak, 

 and sallow bushes and trees, the whitish egg being de- 

 posited on the under side of a leaf. The green larva has 

 a well-defined line down the back, and yellow along the 



sides, with two reddish protrusions on the eleventh 



41 



