The olive brown, clouded greyish eggs are laid in neatly arranged batches around the stems or twigs of plants; I once found a batch in North Devon on a loose piece of rock. The caterpillar when full grown is bright green, with black markings; the warts from which blackish bristles arise are yellow, sometimes pink or blackish. In an early stage it is black, with an orange line low down along the sides; later on it is still black, but ringed with orange. It feeds in June, July, and August on many kinds of plants, among which may be mentioned heather, bramble, sallow, sloe; also meadow-sweet (_Spiræa ulmaria_) and purple loose-strife (_Lythrum salicaria_). The curious cocoon formed by the caterpillar (Plate 67) is {132} so constructed at the narrow end that the moth on emergence can easily pass through; after the insect's escape, the converging fibres forming the "door" spring to again, and the point of exit looks pretty much as before the moth had pushed through. This kind of opening can only be worked from the inside, therefore enemies from without are unable to effect an entrance. The moths are out in April and May, and the males may be seen on sunny days flying at a great pace over heaths, moorlands, and mosses, also about the borders of woods. The female flies at night, but it may occasionally be met with resting on heather or other herbage in the daytime. A freshly emerged female moth will, as a rule, attract as many specimens of the opposite sex as one would care to take; all that one has to do is to take her in a box to some likely spot, and there await the coming of the males. The species seems to be generally distributed throughout the British Isles, but is commoner in some parts than in others, and apparently rare in portions of the Midlands. The distribution abroad extends through Europe to North Asia Minor and Armenia, and to Siberia, Amurland, and Ussuri. DREPANIDÆ. The British species belonging to this family, with one exception, have the tips of the fore wings pointed and curved downwards, forming a sort of hook, hence the English name Hook-tips. The exception is _Cilix spinula_, a round winged moth, not at all like other members of the family, but its caterpillar is very like others of the group. The bristle and catch arrangement for locking the wings is present in all the species, but the tongue or proboscis is absent, or practically so. The caterpillars are not furnished with anal {133} claspers, therefore have only fourteen legs, that is, six true legs and eight false legs (pro-legs). The last ring of the body is more or less tapered, sometimes terminating in a point; the back is roughened with raised spots and warts, or humped. They feed on the leaves of trees and bushes, usually exposed, and they pupate in a silken cocoon, spun up between leaves, or in a folded leaf, of the food plant. Of the eleven species occurring in the Palæarctic Region, seven are European, and six of these are found in the British Isles.