Volume Ii Part 8 (1/2)
THE FOUR-SPOTTED (_Acontia_ (_Tarache_) _luctuosa_).
The fore wings of this species (Plate 19, Fig. 10) are sometimes finely powdered with white, but more often the outer marginal area is distinctly flecked with white. The conspicuous central spot is usually white, but occasionally it has a pinkish ochreous tinge; very rarely it is reduced to a narrow streak with a short spur from its outer edge. The white band on the hind wings is sometimes narrowed and contracted below the middle.
The eggs are shown on Plate 23, Fig. 2. They were, when laid on June 17, whity brown marked with reddish brown.
The caterpillar is ochreous greyish inclining to reddish or brownish; three dark-edged stripes along the back, a dark-brown line along the black spiracles, with two finer wavy lines above it; lower down there is a broad stripe of reddish brown; head marked with four lines of black dots. It feeds, at night, during June, July, and August (later in some seasons), on the small bindweed (_Convolvulus arvensis_), and although it will eat the leaves when nearly full grown it prefers the flowers and seeds in its infancy.
The moth appears in May and June, and a second generation in August and September. In the suns.h.i.+ne it is active on the wing, but in dull weather it hides under herbage, in clover fields, chalky slopes, and rough places where its food plant occurs.
The female will often lay her eggs in a chip-box when she is thus secured after capture; the caterpillars are not difficult to rear if flower buds of the bindweed can be obtained to start them upon.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
2 Pl. 20.
1. BEAUTIFUL YELLOW UNDERWING: _caterpillars_.
2. SCARCE-BORDERED STRAW: _caterpillar_.
3. BORDERED STRAW: _caterpillar_.
4. BORDERED SALLOW: _caterpillar_.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
2 Pl. 21.
1, 2. PURPLE MARBLED.
3. SMALL MARBLED.
4. SILVER-BARRED.
5. SILVER HOOK.
6. _THALPOCHARES PAULA_.
7. MARBLED WHITE-SPOT.
8. STRAW DOT.
9. ROSY MARBLED.
10, 11. SMALL PURPLE BARRED.
12. SPOTTED SULPHUR.
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The species is especially common in the south-west of England, chiefly on the coast, but it seems to occur in most suitable localities in nearly all the southern counties, and its range extends to Gloucesters.h.i.+re on the west and to Norfolk on the east. About seventy-five years ago Stephens used to obtain specimens on a chalky ridge near Hertford, and recently the moth has been found at Hitchin in North Hertfords.h.i.+re.
THE PURPLE MARBLED (_Thalpochares ostrina_).
Two Continental specimens of this little moth are shown on Plate 21, Figs.
1 typical, 2 ab. _carthami_. An example of this species was obtained in June, 1825, in a lane near Bideford, Devons.h.i.+re, and Stephens refers to this as the only specimen of the species that up to that time (1830) had been noted in England. Nothing more was heard of _T. ostrina_ until 1858, when another Devons.h.i.+re specimen was taken, this time near Torquay, on June 8, and during the month several others were captured on the coast; two were also secured in the Isle of Wight, and one in Ayrs.h.i.+re, Scotland. In 1865, a specimen was recorded as taken in July a few years previously at Pembrey, South Wales; 1880, one at Dover in September, and one near Swanage; Barrett mentions specimens taken on the Culver Cliffs, Isle of Wight, in 1859.
It seems unquestionable that examples of this species captured in Britain, and also of the other two _Thalpochares_ to be presently referred to, are immigrants, and it is quite conceivable that besides the specimens captured here, others which have escaped detection may also have arrived with them.
The distribution abroad is extensive, embracing South Europe, Turkey, Asia Minor, Egypt, North-west Africa, Madeira, and the Canary Isles. It has also been found in France and Germany, but its occurrence in the latter country has been even less frequent than in England. {56}