The caterpillar (figured on Plate 18, Fig. 2, from a photo by Mr. H. Main) is greenish white or yellow; the rings are cross banded with yellow and spotted with black; usually the spots are united as in the figure, sometimes they are smaller and well separated, and occasionally all but those low down along the sides are absent. Coupled with decrease in size and number of the black spots, there is variation in the width of the yellow bands. _Verbascum nigrum_ is the more usual food plant in Britain, but it will also eat _V. lychnitis_. It feeds, in July and August, on the flowers and unripe seed capsules in preference to the foliage. {39} Between sixty and seventy years ago, the late Mr. Samuel Stevens obtained the caterpillars on mullein growing in a chalk pit at Arundel in Sussex, and this seems to be the earliest notice of the species occurring in Britain. It is now known also to inhabit Hampshire, Surrey, and Oxfordshire; has been reported from Norfolk, Suffolk, and Gloucestershire. THE STAR-WORT (_Cucullia asteris_). The silvery-grey fore wings of this moth (Plate 15, Fig. 6) are broadly suffused with reddish brown along the front margin, and more narrowly with purplish brown inclining to blackish along the inner margin; the latter is separated from a purplish brown blotch at the outer angle by a whitish edged black curved mark. The caterpillar (figured on Plate 18, Fig. 3, from a photo by Mr. Main) is green with a black-edged yellow stripe along the back, and another along the white spiracles; between these stripes are two pale greenish lines; head, green, sprinkled with blackish. In another form the body is suffused with reddish, inclining to purplish on the back; yellow markings pretty much as in the green form. It feeds chiefly on golden-rod (_Solidago virgaurea_) and sea star-wort (_Aster tripolium_), showing a decided preference for the flowers, but will eat the foliage of the plants mentioned. In confinement it can be reared on garden asters and Michaelmas daisy. It may be obtained on its food plants from July well into September. The moth emerges in June and July as a rule, sometimes in early August, but has been known to come from the chrysalis during September up to the 23rd of that month. The species is found often abundantly in the caterpillar state in the seaboard counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Hants, and Dorset. In Surrey it has occurred at Haslemere, and in {40} the Croydon district (?); and it has been recorded from Herefordshire and North Lancashire. The range abroad extends to East Siberia, Amurland, and Japan. THE SHARK (_Cucullia umbratica_). On the fore wings of this greyish species (Plate 16, Figs. 5 [male] and 6 [female]) there is some variation in the short black streaks on the basal and outer areas, and in the dots around the stigma; the front margin is sometimes brownish tinged. The hind wings of the female are always darker than those of the male.