They are found on many trees, but particularly on the oak, the foliage of which they often entirely devour. They burrow into the ground to change into chrysalides, and undergo all their metamorphoses in the course of the year. Others do not become perfect insects till the autumn, or sometimes not even till the following spring. A few assume the perfect state in winter. There are, indeed, some of these, such as the males of the Hybernias, which fly about on the foggy evenings of November. The females of this genus have either no wings at all, or else only rudimentary ones. Two species, the Hybernia defoliaria, or Winter Moth, and the Chimatobia brumata, abundant here, are very common in the environs of Paris.
M. Maurice Girard says, in his work on the metamorphoses of insects, that the females of these moths can easily be found at the beginning of November, in a very strange place, namely, on the gas lamps of the public promenades; for instance, along the roads in the Bois de Boulogne. No doubt they had climbed up to this height, attracted by the light, or perhaps had been carried thither by the males, which fly, having wings.
| Fig. 263.—Winter Moth (Hybernia defoliaria), male. | Fig. 264.—Winter Moth (Hybernia defoliaria), female. |
In February and March appear other analogous species. "We may find," says M. Maurice Girard, "near Paris, in the meadows which surround the confluence of the Seine and the Marne, at the end of the month of March, the Nyssia zonaria ([Fig. 267]), the males of which insect remain during the day motionless on the grass." [72]
| Fig. 265.—Chimatobia brumata, male. | Fig. 266.—Chimatobia brumata, female. |
There are some species of this family in which the wings of the females are developed like those of the males. [73] Such are thePeppered Moth (Amphidasis betularia) and the Currant Moth (Abraxas grossulariata), whose caterpillar lives on the red currant and gooseberry, and an immense number known as Thorns, Carpets, Waves, &c.
Fig. 267.—Nyssia zonaria, male and female.
The section of the Pyralina contains the smallest nocturnal Lepidoptera, and nearly all those tiny species which flutter round our lights in the evening.