13 



closely to a fir trunk presents, with its white dorsal blotch, 

 a most striking resemblance to another. Perhaps one of 

 the most curious and unexpected cases of resemblance to a 

 lichen is that of Ceropacha flavicornis. It makes its appear- 

 ance while the birches are bare of leaves, and sits conspicuously 

 on the stems, or preferably on the dividing branches, or even 

 twigs, of the birch bushes. At the same time there is upon 

 the same birch bushes a pretty grey lichen in small patches 

 and in perfect growth, and the moth is of precisely the same 

 colour, and has, at the sides of its thorax, a crest of raised 

 tufts of scales which enhances its resemblance to the lichen 

 in an extraordinary degree. Xylocanipa lithoriza, which 

 sufficiently resembles a patch of grey lichen on a tree trunk, 

 harmonizes even better with the grey limestone, of which the 

 "jambs," which support the gates, are built, in the far west, 

 and th2se are, there, its usual resting-places. 



Although the general resemblance of Bombyces of a certain 

 group to dead leaves, already adverted to, is too well-known 

 to require detailed notice, I must mention one case of special 

 mimicry. I was walking down one of the country roads at 

 Norwich some years ago when I noticed a batch of eggs of 

 Eriogaster lanestris on a hawthorn twig, looking particularly 

 velvety and exquisitely arranged ; so I picked the spray to 

 carry it home, and had carried it several hundred yards before I 

 discovered that an apparently dry hawthorn leaf drawn closely 

 to the stem just below the eggs, was really tlie living female 

 moth, still clinging to the place on which she had so carefully 

 arranged them. And I do not regard this as mere careless- 

 ness on my part, for the posture, the colour, the brown band, 

 even the white spot, harmonized in so extraordinary and un- 

 expected a manner with its position and surroundings, that 

 even after 1 had discovered the creature I was amazed at the 

 deception. 



In quite a different style Cirrhcedia xeranipelina, when 

 sitting among the short grass at the foot of an ash tree, may 

 readily be passed over for a hawthorn leaf in an earlier and 

 brighter stage of fading, Selenia illustraria and 5. lunaria, 

 sitting with angular richly-clouded wings half erected, are 

 hardiyto be distinguished from fallen leaves. Drepanafalcula 

 and Brephos parthenias on the twigs of a birch tree equally 

 resemble withered brown birch leaves, Lophopteryx camelina 

 sitting on an elm leaf, with curious thoracic crest, and pro- 

 minent tuft, and its wings closely drawn together, seems a 

 mere dried rolled-up elm leaf, or a pair of the same species, 

 when fallen from an overhanging tree on a frond of bracken, 



