The caterpillar is whitish green, clouded with darker green, striped with white along the back, and marked with white on the sides. The general colour is sometimes very dark green, approaching black, and in this form the white markings are {290} more striking. It feeds, in April and May, on hawthorn, sloe, plum, and bilberry. SPRING USHER (_Hybernia leucophaearia_). [Illustration: FIG. 9. SPRING USHER AT REST. (Photo by W. J. Lucas.)] On Plate 120 are shown the typical and more usual forms of this variable species. Fig. 2 represents the male, and Fig. 4 the female. The form with blackish base and outer margin is ab. _marmorinaria_, Esper (Plate 120, Fig. 5). Ab. _merularia_, Weymer, is entirely black, and a modification of this form is shown in Fig. 6. Between each of these extremes and the type there are various gradations. The caterpillar is usually some shade of green, with yellowish lines on the back, and some have brownish marks on the sides; in others there are dark brown marks on the back of each ring. It feeds on the leaves of oak, in April and May. The moth rests on tree-trunks, fences, etc., and the males may be thus found during the day in February, earlier or later in some seasons; the female is less often obtained on trees and fences, but may be beaten, together with the male, from the dead leaves which remain upon oak and other bushes. The species appears to occur, more or less locally, in most of the English counties; it has also been recorded from Pembrokeshire and Flintshire, in Wales. In Scotland, it is obtained in {291} the south, and northwards to Aberdeenshire. There are but two records from Ireland, and these are doubtful. Abroad, the range extends to Amurland and Japan. SCARCE UMBER (_Hybernia aurantiaria_). One specimen of each sex of this orange yellow species will be found on Plate 120, where Fig. 7 represents the male, and Fig. 9 the female; the cross lines, in the male, are usually distinct on all the wings, but those on the hind pair are sometimes very faint, and occasionally absent. The ground colour is paler in some specimens than in others, and there is variation in the amount of purplish speckling, in the purplish clouding following the second line, and in the submarginal series of purplish marks of the fore wings. The marginal dots are sometimes absent from the hind wings, most frequently in specimens with faint cross lines on these wings. The eggs (Plate 125, Fig. 2), when I received them in February, were purplish, or violet brown.