The caterpillar (Plate 20, Fig. 3, figured from a coloured drawing by Mr. A. Sich) is green, with three darker green or reddish stripes along the back; the stripe along the area of the spiracles is dark green, edged below with white, but when the other stripes are reddish this is also marked with that colour. Several other forms have been described, and the caterpillar seems to be a most variable one. It feeds, from June to August, and again in September and October, on many kinds of low-growing herbage, such as restharrow (_Ononis_), clover (_Trifolium_), _Matricaria inodora_, etc.; also on furze or gorse (_Ulex_), and thorn apple (_Datura_). The blossoms and unripe {51} seeds are preferred in almost all cases, and flowers of the garden marigold will be found useful when these caterpillars are reared in confinement. From eggs deposited by a female moth taken at Deal in the evening of June 17, 1904, the caterpillars hatched out in due course, fed up on wild convolvulus, pupated at the end of July, and the moths emerged during the last week of August and the first week of September. In another case, moths were developed in about forty-seven days from eggs laid in mid-July. In 1907 six caterpillars were found in South Devon during the second week in August, and one of these attained the moth state on September 3. Previous to 1906, which was a notable one for the species, the moth seems not to have been observed earlier than June, but in the year mentioned several were taken at the flowers of valerian during May, at Torquay. Caterpillars were plentiful on restharrow in the same district during June and July, and an example, presumably, of a second generation was captured at bramble blossom on August 11. In the same year and on the 15th of the month just noted, a specimen was reared from a caterpillar found on _Ononis_, July 18, and another specimen captured, August 24, as it flew in the sunshine on a slope of the South Downs. In Clarendon Wood, near Salisbury, Wilts, one example was taken at sugar, September 2, 1906. The species seems to be of fairly regular occurrence in Devonshire and Cornwall, but it has also been observed, more or less rarely, in many other English counties, chiefly those on the coast; in Pembrokeshire and Glamorganshire, South Wales; a few specimens have occurred in Co. Cork, and one in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. All that appears to be known of this species in Scotland is that one specimen has been recorded from Markton, Ayrshire. Abroad, its distribution is extensive, ranging from Africa, the Canaries, and Madeira to Central and Southern Europe, and through Asia to India. {52} THE SCARCE BORDERED STRAW (_Heliothis armigera_).