GASTROPACHA IL1C1FOLIA. 197 



flies strongly from 8 p.m. — 9 p.m. (Tutt). The imagines are very 

 agile, and towards the evening they fly quickly ; when they are 

 at rest they place the antennae by the side of the thorax, and 

 hold the head lowered (De Geer). On May 17th, 1851, Atkinson 

 met with the first authentic British specimen on Cannock Chase, 

 clinging to a dead sprig of heather, apparently but lately emerged 

 from the pupa, and bearing so great a resemblance to a withered 

 leaf, that it would not probably have caught his eye had he 

 not luckily knelt down within a few inches of it to pin a small 

 Tortricid moth (Zoo/., 1852, p. 3396). The occurrence of this speci- 

 men had, however, been mentioned at the meeting of the Ento- 

 mological Society of London on June 2nd, 185 1 (loc. cit., 1851, 

 p. 3178), and exhibited at the meeting of July 7th, 1851 (loc. cit., 

 p. 32i2)"by Mr. Smith. For a long time previous to this, however, 

 the species had been reputed to be British, having been described 

 by Stephens in 1828 (Illus. HausL, ii., p. 53) and figured by 

 Humphreys and Westwood (British Moths, vol. i., pi. xii., fig. 8), 

 although at the time no really British specimen was known. Almost 

 directly after the exhibition of Atkinson's specimen, Stephens 

 recorded (Zool., ix., p. 3244) two larvae found a few miles from 

 Sheffield by Green, in 1850, one of which pupated, and produced a 

 moth on April 20th, 1851, nearly a month before Atkinson's specimen 

 was taken, and two more larvae were recorded (loc. cit., p. 3358), as 

 having been taken by Green in 1852; after which a number of 

 specimens were recorded from Cannock Chase, and the moors around 

 Sheffield* and Ripon, Partridge noting among those taken in the 

 former locality, three imagines, captured May, 1857, hanging on under- 

 sides of sprigs of heather. Weaver and the brothers Bonney obtained 

 the species at Cannock also in considerable numbers (teste Freer, Ent., 

 xvi., p. 260, and Ent. Rec, vi., p. 238), and Freer himself captured the 

 last recorded f Cannock example on May 17th, 1896 (Ent. Rec, viii., 

 p. 86). Riihl records (Soc. Ent., v., p. 179) beating from birch a 

 pair that were in copula, when he was collecting on the Uto, and 

 that, whilst being boxed, the male suddenly loosed his hold of the ? 

 and fell into some faggots beneath, where he was unable to find it. 

 He further notes that the meconium of the $ is of a pale silvery 

 colour. Horton's larva, from which the description (anted, p. 193) was 

 made, was taken on August 3rd, 1864, in a wood abounding with 

 bilberry, at Lynton (E.M.M., i., p. 121). Porritt writes (List 

 Yorkshire Lep., p. 30) : "The moors near Sheffield and Ripon were 

 formerly well known localities for this scarce species, but it has not 

 been taken there now for some years," and he further notes on the 

 authority of Walsingham that Eedle is supposed to have seen it on 

 the moors at Blubberhouses in 1882. Burnett notes (Ent. Rec, vi., 

 p. 238) that the locality where Bonney used to obtain the larvae 

 on Cannock Chase in considerable plenty is now greatly changed, 

 part is now a field, the rest a thick covert, and the bilberry, which 



* Gregson notes (Ent. Wk. Int., p. 58) : " On Sheffield Moor, the locality 

 for iliclfolia, Messrs. Brook, Hydes, Thomson, and myself, took many larvae in 

 September." These captures evidently do not refer to larvae of ilieifolia, in spite of 

 the form of the sentence. 



t Freer writes that he " bred two imagines from three larvoe found at Cannock 

 in 1898," and has no doubt that, though the species appears to be dying out there, 

 hard work will still produce it (in litt., Jan. 9th, 1902 1. 



