The Yellow-tail (Porthesia similis).
The male has usually only one black mark on the fore wings, but sometimes there are two, as seen in Fig. 5, Plate [43]; more rarely there is a dot or two towards the tips of the wings. The habit of the moth is to sit upon the foliage of bushes and the branches of trees, where it might easily be passed over for a fluffy white feather; occasionally it may be found on palings or even iron railings. About dark it is on the wing, and light has then a great attraction for it. The caterpillar is black with black and grey hairs; a vermillion stripe down the middle of the back has a black central line, and is expanded on rings four, eleven, and twelve; along each side there are tufts of snowy white fluffy scales; the back of rings four,
five, and eleven is velvety black and slightly raised, especially on ring four. Head black and glossy.
The caterpillars hatch from the eggs, which are laid in batches, in August, hibernate, each in a silken case, and recommence feeding in the spring (Plate [42], Figs. 1, 1a). In May, when nearly full grown, they separate and are then common objects on hawthorn hedges in many districts. They also feed on the foliage of oak, beech, birch, sallow, rose, apple, pear, and other fruit trees. Sometimes a nearly fully mature caterpillar has been found in August, this has pupated and produced a moth the same year. The chrysalis is rather hairy and of a brownish colour; the cocoon is similar to that of the last species. In late June and through July the moth is generally common throughout the Southern part of England, and as far northwards as Lancashire and Yorkshire. It has been very rarely seen in Scotland, and not at all in Ireland.
Distribution, Central and South-eastern Europe, extending to Amurland, China, Corea, and Japan.
The Reed Tussock (Lælia coenosa).
This insect (Plate [45]) was formerly abundant in some parts of fenland, and was first met with, as a British species, at Whittlesea Mere about 1819 or 1820. It was subsequently found in Yaxley and Burwell fens. Up to 1860 it continued to occur freely in all stages, but by 1865 larvæ at a shilling per dozen, the price at which they had been sold by the reed cutters, were no longer obtainable, and they became so scarce that in the year 1871 or thereabouts, only two caterpillars were seen. The species was at that time seemingly on the decline, but a year or two later a good many males were attracted by the rays of a powerful lamp that had been set up at Wicken. Then the moths became fewer and fewer
until at last, somewhere about 1880, even the lamps would not draw a single specimen, and soon it appeared probable that the last of the Reed Tussock had been seen in the fens, its only known habitat in Britain.
Caterpillar, dusky with a blackish stripe along the middle of the back; the raised dots are ochreous grey with pale yellowish brown hairs arising from them; there are four brushes of yellow hairs on the back, bunches of long hairs on the first ring extended over the brownish head, and a pencil of similar hairs on ring eleven directed backward. The food plants given are bur-reed (Sparganium), Stephens; Cladium mariscus, Barrett, and reed (Phragmites communis). Stephens states that the caterpillar and the moth were found at the end of July and beginning of August, but other authorities give August to June for the caterpillar, and July for the moth. The caterpillar described above, and of which a figure is given on Plate [44], was obtained, together with eggs and cocoon, from Dr. Staudinger and Bang Haas, of Dresden. All are preserved examples.
Abroad this species is found in Northern Germany and France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Amurland, China, Corea, and Japan.