The caterpillar is white on the back with five black stripes, the outer ones broader than the others; all these stripes are broken up by brownish patches, and they fail to show at all on the eighth ring, which, therefore, is conspicuously white; the sides are smoky grey marked with white on the second and third rings; the warts are reddish, bearing smoky grey hairs. It may be found from July to September on the lichens growing on the trunks of oak trees. The moth does not appear until the following May or June, when it may be beaten from branches. Not uncommon in the woods, chiefly oak, of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, and Dorset; it also occurs in Cambridgeshire and Sussex. In Berkshire and Bucks it is fairly common, but seems to affect the beech woods in those counties. Recorded from Ireland by Birchall, who stated that it was abundant at Killarney.
The Dotted Footman (Pelosia muscerda).
The fore wings are pale grey suffused with pale reddish-brown except on the costal area: there are six black dots, two
before the middle of the wing and placed above the inner margin, and four beyond the middle in an oblique series from the costa; the hind wings are pale brownish-grey, becoming somewhat darker towards the apex. (Plate [99], Fig. 5.)
Caterpillar velvety blackish-brown, marbled with reddish-grey; stripe along middle of the back, and a line on each side of it deep black; warts and hairs brown, the latter short but numerous; a pair of red spots on ring one, and another pair on ring twelve; beneath the spiracles is a fine reddish-grey line; under surface pinkish grey; head small and blackish (Buckler). So far it has escaped detection in its fenny home, but it has been reared from eggs laid by a captured female. Caterpillars obtained in this way seem to have thrived on a mixed diet of lichens, mosses, and withered leaves of bramble and sallow. August to May. Buckler states that the dark chestnut-brown pupa is enclosed in a double cocoon, the inner a webby one of greyish silk, and the outer one thinner and composed of white silk. The whole affair was formed in a curled-up bramble leaf. The caterpillar is figured on Plate [98], Fig. 5.
The moth is out in late July and through August. It has been obtained in a certain marshy locality in the New Forest, Hants, and also in some marshes at Sandwich, Kent. Its chief haunts are, however, in the fens of Norfolk, such as those on the river Bure, and Brundall fen on the Yare, but Horning and Ranworth are, perhaps, the headquarters of the species. It may be mentioned that when Stephens wrote about this insect in 1829 only two specimens had then occurred in Britain, and these had been found in a marsh at Horning floating upon the water in a ditch.
Distribution: Central Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Dalmatia, Corsica and Sardinia, Amurland and Japan.
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