Towards the end of October, and all through the month of November, you may often find this handsome moth resting on fences, or on the trunks of trees. But although it is so brightly coloured you may easily pass it by without seeing it, for it looks almost exactly like a piece of dead and withered leaf. The male varies a good deal in markings. Sometimes, for instance, he has no dark streaks on his wings at all, but is reddish-brown all over, sprinkled with very tiny blackish dots. But the female is always grub-like, with such very tiny wings that you can hardly see them. You can tell her from that of any other of the “winter moths” by the two rows of large black spots which run all down her yellowish-brown body. The caterpillars of this moth are very plentiful indeed. In colour they are reddish-brown above, with a broad yellow stripe on each side, and greenish-yellow beneath. They feed upon the leaves of hazel, oak, birch, sloe, and ever so many other trees and bushes. And if you walk through a wood in May or June, after a strong wind has been blowing, you may often see numbers of them swinging in the air, each suspended from a twig or a leaf by a slender silken thread. PLATE XL THE GARDEN CARPET (1) This is another of our very commonest British moths. You may find it in dozens, and even in hundreds, in almost any garden, just by shaking the bushes or the branches of the trees. And very often you may see it resting on a wall, or on a fence, or fluttering about in a lighted room at night. It is fond, too, of hiding in outhouses and sheds, or behind a piece of loose bark on the trunk of a dead tree. In fact, there is hardly any place where you may _not_ find it, from the beginning of May until the end of September, and sometimes even later still. And if you wanted to catch a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand Garden Carpets, you could very easily do so. The caterpillars, of course, are quite as common as the moths. They are queer little stick-like creatures, and vary very much in colour, some being grey, and some light green, and some dark green, and some pale brown. But they always have several arrow-shaped dark markings upon their backs, with four or five pale blotches behind them. Look for them on nasturtium leaves, and also on those of cabbage and horseradish plants. [Illustration: PLATE XL 1. Garden Carpet 2. Yellow Shell 3. Pebble Hook-tip] PLATE XL THE YELLOW SHELL (2) I really think that this moth is even commoner than the “garden carpet.” From the beginning of June till the middle of August you can hardly go into the garden without seeing it. If you look at a fence or a tree-trunk, there it is sure to be resting with outspread wings. If you shake a bush or a low plant, or the leaves of a creeper growing upon a wall, it is certain to fly out. And soon after sunset on any warm evening you may see it flying about in scores, or even in hundreds.