The caterpillar, which is moderately stout, and tapers slightly towards each end, has only twelve feet. Ground colour, sooty black, with orange-coloured raised dots, from which arise long recurved hairs. The late Mr. W. H. Tugwell (from whose description of the larva that given above has been adapted), in 1884, was shown caterpillars upon a black sooty-looking fungus (determined by Dr. M. C. Cooke as an effused Muscedine), growing in masses on rotten wood in an old wooden building in Bermondsey, near the river. He afterwards reared the moths.
The caterpillar hatches from the egg in August, but it is not full grown until May or June, when it spins a fairly compact cocoon of greyish silk, which is coated with particles of decayed wood and dried fungus.
The moth is out in June and July, and most of the known British specimens have been captured in London, or reared from caterpillars found therein. Stephens (1831) mentions three or four examples taken during the previous thirty years, and gives as localities—Blackfriars bridge, and Little Chelsea; Stainton (1859) adds, Fleet Street. Other specimens have been taken in the City in 1855, 1859, 1862, 1870, 1879, and 1881. One occurred at Clapham in 1864, and one has been reported from Crome in Worcestershire. More recent records are—one specimen flying around a sugared post at Walthamstow, July 29, 1901; eight, chiefly at light, at Camberley, 1904-5; and lastly, a specimen at St. Katharine's Docks, July, 1906.
The Fan-foot (Zanclognatha tarsipennalis).
This species is shown in both sexes on Plate [35], Figs. 1 ♂, 2 ♀; it is the Pyralis tentaculalis of Haworth, and also that author's tarsicrinatus, and the tarsicrinalis of Stephens. The general colour is brownish, sometimes inclining to ochreous, and occasionally with a greyish cast. The submarginal line starts from the front edge, before the tip, of the fore wing.
The caterpillar is greyish brown, darker freckled, and dotted with black, downy; three broken darker lines along the back, the central one broad and inclining to black, and lower down along the sides is a series of blackish streaks; head, darker. It feeds in July and August, and hibernates when nearly or quite full grown. Among various foods that have been mentioned for it are raspberry, ivy, and knotgrass. Some years ago I had some moths emerge in the autumn; these resulted from caterpillars that I had reared from the egg on blackberry, and I remember that they showed a decided preference for the withered leaves left in the cage for them to pupate among. (Plate [34], Fig. 2.)
The moth is out in June and July, but individuals of a second generation seldom occur in the open. Although it occurs in woods, it is far more frequent in lanes and hedgerows. Common and generally distributed, from Worcester southwards, and to the east and west; northwards its range extends to Yorkshire, but it is local and uncommon.
In Scotland it is not scarce in some parts of Ayrshire, and has been recorded from Kircudbrightshire. Kane mentions it as fairly common in Ireland.
The range abroad extends to Amurland, Corea, and Japan.