The female will often lay her eggs in a chip-box when she is thus secured after capture; the caterpillars are not difficult to rear if flower buds of the bindweed can be obtained to start them upon.

2 Pl. 20.
1.Beautiful Yellow Underwing: caterpillars.
2.Scarce-bordered Straw: caterpillar.
3.Bordered Straw: caterpillar.
4.Bordered Sallow: caterpillar.

2 Pl. 21.
1, 2.Purple Marbled. 3.Small Marbled. 4.Silver-barred.
5.Silver Hook. 6.Thalpochares paula. 7.Marbled White-spot.
8.Straw Dot. 9.Rosy Marbled.10, 11.Small Purple Barred.
12.Spotted Sulphur.

The species is especially common in the south-west of England, chiefly on the coast, but it seems to occur in most suitable localities in nearly all the southern counties, and its range extends to Gloucestershire on the west and to Norfolk on the east. About seventy-five years ago Stephens used to obtain specimens on a chalky ridge near Hertford, and recently the moth has been found at Hitchin in North Hertfordshire.

The Purple Marbled (Thalpochares ostrina).

Two Continental specimens of this little moth are shown on Plate [21], Figs. 1 typical, 2 ab. carthami. An example of this species was obtained in June, 1825, in a lane near Bideford, Devonshire, and Stephens refers to this as the only specimen of the species that up to that time (1830) had been noted in England. Nothing more was heard of T. ostrina until 1858, when another Devonshire specimen was taken, this time near Torquay, on June 8, and during the month several others were captured on the coast; two were also secured in the Isle of Wight, and one in Ayrshire, Scotland. In 1865, a specimen was recorded as taken in July a few years previously at Pembrey, South Wales; 1880, one at Dover in September, and one near Swanage; Barrett mentions specimens taken on the Culver Cliffs, Isle of Wight, in 1859.

It seems unquestionable that examples of this species captured in Britain, and also of the other two Thalpochares to be presently referred to, are immigrants, and it is quite conceivable that besides the specimens captured here, others which have escaped detection may also have arrived with them.