Chestnut-coloured Carpet (Thera cognata).
This is a generally smaller species than that last referred to, and it is more glossy in appearance. The fore wings are brown, sometimes grey-brown, more or less tinged with reddish, and the basal patch and central band are darker; these markings are usually white-edged, and there is a wavy whitish submarginal line. Hind wings whitish, tinged with smoky grey. Specimens from the Hebrides are strongly purplish; and Kane states that some he reared from Sligo caterpillars are more richly coloured than any that he has seen from Scotland. (Plate [70], Figs. 9 ♂ 12 ♀.)
The bright green caterpillar is stouter than that of the last species. It is of a bluish hue along the back, and marked with three lines, the central one greenish and the others whitish and broad; there are sometimes reddish markings low down on the sides, just edging the broad white spiracular line. It feeds in May and June, earlier or later in some seasons, on juniper; it turns to a dark-green chrysalis in a frail cocoon spun up among the litter under the juniper bushes.
The moth is to be found in July and August among juniper growing in the hilly and maritime haunts of the species in North England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.
This species, long known as simulata, Hübner, has been referred to cognata, Thunberg, and as this is an earlier name it will have to be used.
Pine Carpet (Thera firmata).
The pale reddish-grey fore wings have a rather darker central band and round-edged basal patch, but the latter is often indistinct, and the band, which is always deeply indented about the middle of its inner edge, is sometimes not well defined. The hind wings are whitish, tinged more or less with greyish or pale brownish, but always paler than in any form of T. variata, with which it is often confused. (Plate [70], Figs. 10, 11.)
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