STEREHOPTEEIX HIRSUTELLA. 429 



peculiar coloration of pupa here noticed also occurs in Psyche viciella, 

 &c] (Chapman). The female pupa black with orange head and anal 

 area ; at the anterior end one distinguishes a small thoracic area 

 entirely without wing-sheaths. It is irregularly oval in form, narrow 

 anteriorly, broader posteriorly (Heylaerts). Hofmann says that the 

 swollen female pupa is black-brown, the head and anus yellow-brown, 

 whilst Bruand calls the pupa " bicolorous." 



Dehiscence. — $ . In the male pupa of 8. hirsutella the face, 

 head and legs, adhere in one piece, and separate from the rest of the 

 pupa, except that the inner shreds retain it near its place ; the pro- 

 and mesothorax split dorsally. There seems to be no opening of 

 incisions anterior to abdominal segment 2. ? . In the female pupa 

 the head-parts separate dorsally from prothorax, and the thoracic 

 segments split in the median line. But after the ? has left the 

 case it closes together and looks very like a full pupa, so far as any 

 openings go. (The same arrangement seems to be the rule in the 

 Psychidi — Psyche stetinensis, viciella, &c.) (Chapman). 



Food-plants. — Almost polyphagous. Bramble in spring and 

 autumn, various trees particularly buckthorn, oak, and mountain-ash 

 in summer (Mitford), oak, buckthorn (Wood), oak, birch, beech, elm, 

 &c. (Heylaerts), hawthorn, hornbeam, hazel (Knaggs), sloe, nut, sallow, 

 aspen (Bruand), Sorbus, Quercus, leaves on small shoots growing out 

 of trunk (Hofmann), Primus pa'dus, Quercus, and deciduous trees 

 (Reutti), Lotus uliyinosus, Rhamnits frangula, Viburnum opulus (in 

 captivity) (Brown), birch, alder, bilberry (Glitz), oak, birch (Schiitze), 

 hazel, sallow, oak (Ingpen). 



Habits and Habitat. — Larva3 (from Hampstead parents) hatched 

 in August, the moths appearing the following June twelvemonths, 

 taking two years to come to maturity, the female cases generally spun- 

 up on leaves in an upright position those of the males hanging pendent 

 from branches or main stem (Mitford). Paul and Plotz state that the 

 pupal stage lasts 21 days. Standfuss observes that in Silesia the male 

 emerges and is ready for flight in 30 minutes, whilst Schmid and Hof- 

 mann both confirm this observation. Mitford says that the imago flies 

 freely at dusk, and Schiitze records it as being captured at light at 

 Rachlau. Heylaerts, on the other hand, notes that, about Breda, at 

 the end of June and beginning of July, the males may be found 

 flying rather commonly on sunny days about the ? cases which are 

 firmly attached to trees in a pinewood. The period of copulation is 

 very brief, and the female soon begins to lay her eggs in the interior 

 of the case. Blackburn records males as being found flying over the 

 heath at Rannoch. Wood comments on its being excessively local in 

 Hereford, and, so far as he has observed, it appears to be confined to a 

 somewhat restricted area in the heart of Haugh Wood, the yearling cases 

 common on leaves of oak, buckthorn, &c. Werneburg notes the cases 

 as common on oak-trunks in the Steigerwald near Erfurt. Peyerimhoff 

 observes it as common in all the woods of Alsace, and Jaggi on the 

 south side of tbe Simplou Pass ; Hofmann finds the cases in an oak 

 wood at Erlangen, whilst near Ratisbon it occurs in a wood by Etterz- 

 hausen, which has a large growth of young deciduous trees, the cases 

 being spun-up in May, on the tall larch trunks, Heylaerts says it is 

 common in the woods of eastern Holland and Belgium, whilst Guenee 

 finds it in the shady parts of woods in the Dept. Eure-et-Loir, the 



