HYPENINÆ.
The Beautiful Hook-tip (Laspeyria flexula).
Some specimens are browner and others greyer than that shown on Plate [36], Fig. 1; the pale even lines are generally edged with reddish brown, and the notch under the tip of the wing is margined with the same colour.
The caterpillar has the first and second pairs of prolegs very short, and below the brown-ringed spiracles there is a projecting ridge, fringed with a row of fleshy greenish-white filaments, some of which are forked. Bluish-green, sometimes tinged with ochreous; raised dots, black at the tips, on a base of whitish green; along the middle of the back is a series of darker green spear-points, and beyond this on each side a pale line, edged above by a fine wavy black line, and below by a darker green line; the eighth and eleventh rings of the body darker than the others. (Abridged from description by Buckler.) It feeds on lichens growing upon larch, spruce, hawthorn, sloe, fruit trees, etc., from September to May. The moth is out in June, July, and August, and may be beaten from the branches of trees, and from hedges, but the flushing of a specimen in this way is always a more or less casual event. It has been taken on several occasions at street lamps, and also in illuminated moth traps.
In England the species seems to be widely distributed over the southern counties to Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire; and in the east to Norfolk. It has also been recorded from Derbyshire (one), and Yorkshire (two).
The range abroad extends to Amurland.
The Waved Black (Parascotia fuliginaria).
In the shape of its wings and general appearance the dingy insect represented on Plate [36], Fig. 2, would seem to belong to the Geometridæ rather than to the present group, and, indeed, has been mistaken for a dark form of Ematurga atomaria. However, the long, projecting palpi are evidence of its being a member of this sub-family.