264 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. [December 



Whilst staying at Penmaenmawr (North Wales) in July this 

 year, I was fortunate enough to come across the locality where 

 Ashworthii occurs. From what I saw of it, it seems to be confined to 

 one very restricted locality, and though fairly plentiful in that one 

 spot, it might very easily escape notice if not especially looked for, as 

 the cliffs which it frequents do not present at all an attractive 

 appearance from a distance, but on closer inspection are seen to be 

 broken up into numerous narrow, deep cracks which are filled with 

 various grasses, heather, thyme and sundry other plants. 



The moth sits through the day, fully exposed on the face of these 

 rocks, but its colour harmonises so perfectly with them that very close 

 searching is necessary to find it. This, however, is not without its 

 advantage, as one is the more likely to find ova as well as the imagines. 

 The eggs are laid in batches of 30 or 40, generally on the rock itself, 

 but sometimes on a dead twig of heather or grass, and seem to be 

 deposited at haphazard by the female, as in some cases I could see no 

 living plant within 30 or 40 feet of them; but as the young larvae are 

 very lively customers and not particular as to what they eat, they 

 probably are not long in findmg something suitable to feed upon. 



From July 20th to 30th I found a dozen imagines and as many 

 batches of ova (some of which were already hatched), but I did not 

 take above 80 eggs. Above 60 of these hatched (the rest having 

 probably been injured in getting them off the rock) and the young 

 larvae, which, like many other noctuae larvae ''loop" when first 

 hatched, took readily to both willow and plantain. During the first 

 ten days of their existence they only got on slowly, and as I felt pretty 

 certain that if I allowed them to hybernate in their natural condition, 

 I should only get a small proportion of them to live through the 

 winter, I determined to try if they could not be induced to feed up 

 straight away. To this end, as soon as the larvae had changed their 

 first skins, I divided them into four lots, putting each into a good 

 sized glass jar, in which was a bottle containing their food plant, and 

 put the jars in a very warm place in the kitchen; The heat, which, 

 as a rule could not have been less than 80° Fahrenheit inside the jars, 

 soon began to have a good effect, and by the end of August nearly all 

 the larvae had reached the stage in which they would hybernate in a 

 wild state. As soon as they were so far advanced I removed them 

 into flower pots, so as to give them more air, but still kept them in the 



