440 INSECTS AT HOME. 



This is rather a pretty Moth, though the colours are any- 

 thing but brilliant. The wings are warm chestnut, the upper 

 pair having some waved transverse marks, as shown in the illus- 

 tration, and a bold, nearly semilunar white spot at the anal 

 angle. 



He is very common, and is one of the few Lepidoptera — except 

 perhaps the Clothes-Moth, which is more plentiful than desired 

 — that is very common in London, and may be found even in 

 the dingiest and smokiest portions, provided that trees or shrubs 

 gi-ow in it. I should think that if even Leicester Square could 

 produce a tree, it would also produce the Vapourer ISIoth. He 

 is one of the day-flying moths, and seems to revel in the 

 blazing sunbeams, flitting about with rapid, and apparently 

 uncertain wing, upon the hottest days of summer. 



There is, however, nothing uncertain about his flight, for he 

 has a very definite object, namely, to seek a mate. Consider- 

 ing the kind of creature she is, and her peculiar habits, one is 

 led to marvel, in the first place, how the active, prettily- 

 coloured male Vapom'er can find anything attractive in the 

 female, who is about as plain — not to say, plebeian — an insect 

 as can well be imagined. A figure of the female is given 

 on Woodcut XLVII. Fig. 4, and the reader will see that a 

 less attractive and more commonplace creature can hardly be 

 seen. She has no wings to speak of, these organs being quite 

 imdeveloped and simply rudimentary, so that she could not fly 

 one single inch. Her body is large, thick, soft, and covered 

 ' with grey down, slightly darker at the edge of each segment. 



This curious creature never wanders from the spot where she 

 happens to have passed into the pupal state. Like the mah-, 

 she has, when a full-fed caterpillar, spun a silken web, within 

 which she has undergone her transformation. 



The male has done the same, but when he has assumed the 

 perfect form, he shakes out his pretty wings, takes to the air, 

 and gaily sets out, like ' Coelebs,' in search of a wife. She, on 

 the other hand, never travels at all. Where she was reared, there 

 she lives, tliere she is mated, there she provides a fresh brood, 

 and there she dies, fulfilling the duties of her life within very 

 narrow bounds. Her eggs are laid upon the silken web which 

 she herself spun as a caterpillar, and from those eggs are hatched 

 a brood of tiny larvjB, each of wliich is intended to follow- in 

 the track of its parents. 



