The Grey Shoulder-knot (Graptolitha (Xylina) ornithopus).
The moth, of which a portrait will be found on Plate [12], Fig. 6, emerges from the chrysalis in the autumn, and may then be found at night on ivy bloom or at the sugar patch; and in the daytime it may frequently be seen on tree trunks, palings, etc. After hibernation, it is again seen in the spring, on fences, pales, etc., and visits the sallow catkins at night. Females of this species, and other hibernating kinds, taken in the spring generally deposit fertile eggs pretty freely; often such specimens are not in the best condition, but one female, if she has not already parted with most of her eggs, will as a rule deposit quite as many as the collector is likely to need.
The caterpillar is of a blue-green colour with whitish freckles;
three broken whitish lines along the back; head, green, with a paler mark on each cheek. It is to be found in May and early June on the leaves of oak.
The species is widely distributed throughout England and Wales, but is more frequently met with in the south than in the north. It is found in Scotland, but only rarely, and the same remark applies to Ireland generally, although the species is not uncommon in some parts of Wicklow, Cork, and Kerry.
Its range abroad extends to Amurland and Japan.
The Golden-rod Brindle (Lithomoia solidaginis).
On Plate [12], Fig. 8 represents a Lancashire specimen, whilst Fig. 9 is taken from an Aberdeen example. The first, having the central area suffused with brown, is more nearly typical, and the other varies in the direction of ab. virgata, Tutt, in which form the central shade is black. Other named forms are—ab. cinerascens, Staud. = pallida, Tutt (pale ashy-grey, central shade almost or quite obsolete), ab. suffusa, Tutt (similar to virgata, but the basal area also black or blackish).
The caterpillar is brown, with a purplish or violet tinge, and freckled with grey; an indistinct line along the middle of the back and a creamy stripe along the sides, the latter is edged above with black; head, shining reddish-brown, freckled with darker brown. It feeds on bilberry, bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), heather, sallow, birch, and hawthorn, and is to be found from May to July.
The moth is out in August and September, and in its woodland and moorland haunts is to be seen sitting about on the dead stems of bracken, charred twigs and stems of heather, or on birch trunks, rocks, walls, etc. When thus resting, however, they very closely resemble twisted birch bark, grouse droppings, and other common objects occurring in the haunts of the species, so that its detection is not easy at first.