The Cream-spot Tiger (Arctia villica).
Although this moth does not vary to the same extent as its cousin the Garden Tiger, it is still subject to considerable aberration in the size, number, and position of the yellowish-white, or cream-coloured spots on the fore wings and of the black spots and hind marginal markings of the hind wings. The former are often much reduced in size, rarely perhaps so greatly as to leave the fore wings almost entirely black; but they are sometimes so greatly enlarged and united that these wings appear to be cream coloured with black markings. On the hind wings the black spots nearest the base are sometimes widened and lengthened so as to meet and form a transverse band; in other specimens the black markings on the outer area are run together into a patch. Occasionally both forms of hind wing aberration occur in the same specimen. I am not aware of any case in which the hind wings are spotless, but I have seen specimens in which this condition was very closely approached. Very rarely the hind wings are suffused with black, and at least two specimens with all the wings suffused with black have been recorded. (Plate [87], Figs. 1-3.)
| Pl. 84. |
| Garden Tiger varieties. |
| Pl. 85. |
| Garden Tiger Moth. |
| Eggs, natural size and enlarged; caterpillars and chrysalis. |
The pearly white eggs are laid in neatly arranged batches on leaves. The caterpillars hatch out in July, feed for a few weeks, and go into hibernation while still small. They resume feeding in a favourable season as early as mid-March. Some that I obtained at the end of March, then about three parts grown, began to spin up on April 15. The full-grown caterpillar is black with several star-like clusters of brown hairs on each ring, the hairs on the back of the hinder rings rather longer and slightly curved backwards; the head, legs, and claspers are red, approaching crimson. A diet of dandelion suits it very well, but it will also eat chickweed, dock, nettle, groundsel, and in fact almost any low-growing plant. The outer leaves of lettuce are useful on occasion but should not be given exclusively, and it also likes the tender shoots of gorse (Ulex europæus). Chrysalis and cocoon somewhat similar to those of the last species (Plate [86]).
The moth emerges in May and June. Occasionally a few larvæ will feed up and the moths appear the same year, but this only happens in captivity and not in the open. When reposing in the daytime, on a hedgebank for example, with the fore wings closed down over and hiding the yellow hind wings this moth is not so conspicuous as one might suppose it would be. At night it is active on the wing and often flies into houses, attracted by the light. I have put up specimens now and then
in hay fields, and once found half a dozen along a short stretch of the Upper cliff at Ventnor, Isle of Wight.