In this country the caterpillar feeds on bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), but on the Continent it is said to eat the foliage of sallows and willows, also of birch.
The cocoon is spun up among the leaves of the food plant. That figured on Plate [62], of foreign origin, was on a shoot of bilberry; a moth emerged from it on April 5, 1907. The first detailed account of this species in Britain is that in the Zoologist for 1852, in which Mr. Atkinson records that he took a specimen in May, 1851, at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. A year earlier two larvæ were found by Mr. Green on a moor near Sheffield, and one of these attained the moth state in April, 1851. After this moths and caterpillars seem to have been taken in varying numbers down to 1896, when a specimen was captured by Dr. R. Freer of Rugby. Tutt, quoting from a letter received from Dr. Freer, states that two moths were reared from three caterpillars found at Cannock in 1898. The only other known British locality is in the neighbourhood of Lynton, North Devon, where a caterpillar, which, from the description, must have been this species, was found in 1864. It was taken on August 3 in a wood abounding with bilberry.
The species ranges over Central Europe, but seems to be generally rare; it also occurs in Amurland and Japan.
The Lappet (Gastropacha quercifolia).
Warm reddish brown is the prevailing colour of this fine moth. The wings are more or less suffused with purplish grey, and crossed by blackish lines—three on the fore wings and two on the hind wings. Except in the reddish tinge, which may be bright or dull approaching chocolate, this species is pretty constant in its coloration. Barrett mentions a specimen of a light brown colour, and another of a pale buff. The first of these forms seems to approach the var. meridionalis, Staudinger (Tutt), and the other to var. ulmifolia, Heuäcker, which are well known on the Continent. In certain favourable seasons a second generation of the moth has been obtained, chiefly perhaps, in confinement, and on the Continent; although in Britain a caterpillar or two will sometimes feed up and attain the perfect state the same year they hatch from the egg. These examples, which are much smaller, but do not otherwise differ from normal specimens, are referable to var. hoegei, Heuäcker.
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| Pl. 62. | ||
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| Pl. 63. | ||
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