THE CLIFDEN NONPAREIL. 



539 



attitude it looks more like a stray piece of stick than a moth, and would escape any 

 one who was not searching carefully for it and was acquainted with its habits. 



The largest insect in the illustration is the CLIFDEN NONPAREIL, a fine and rare 

 example of the Underwing-moths, so called because the hinder pair of wings are mostly 

 of some bright color while the upper pair are of comparatively sober tints. All these 

 insects have a habit of settling on trunks of trees, or objects of similar dark hues, and 

 drawing their upper wings so closely over each other as to conceal the brilliantly colored 

 lower wings entirely beneath their shelter. When so seated, or rather suspended, as 

 they always hang in a vertical attitude, it is almost impossible to discover them, even 

 though they be marked down to the very tree on which they alight. They require 



CLIFDEN NONPAREIL. Catoca/a fraxinus. 

 SWORD-QRASS MOTH.-Ca/ocampa exoleta. (And larva.) PEACH-BL.OSSOM KlOTH.-Tbyatlra bails. 



some little care on the part of the pursuer ; for although they depend much on their 

 dull coloring for concealment, they are very alert on the wing, and the moment that 

 they take alarm they speed away with wonderful alacrity. 



The caterpillar of the Clifden Nonpareil is very scarce in this country, and when 

 found is almost invariably in one of the southern counties. Upon the Continent, how- 

 ever, it is tolerably plentiful. It feeds on various trees, such as the poplar, oak, elm, 

 and ash, the last mentioned seeming to be its favorite. Its general color is ashen 

 yellow, with a multitude of minute black spots. Nearly at the end of the body there 

 is a bluish black protuberance with a few yellow spots, and on the next segment there 

 is an oblique black line. Before it changes into the pupal form, it makes a loose silken 

 cocoon among leaves. This moth, although the largest British example of the genus, 

 is not the most brilliantly colored. The general color of the upper wings is gray, with 



