THE ROSY-MARBLED MOTH IN BRITAIN. 31
not born until that year (!) Barrett was evidently confusing
dates.
In 1859-60 it was first bred in England by Henry Nicholls,
a friend of the late W. H. Tugwell, of Greenwich, who records
(Entomologist 1883, p. 164), that the larvae were first tried with
a variety of plants growing where the moths were caught in
Epping Forest. The larvae took most readily to the flowers
of the common tormentil (Potentilla erecta = P. tormentilla)
and the first specimens of the moth bred in this country duly
appeared. Tugwell himself, some 17 years later, also reared
the larvae on the same plant until they were nearly full-fed, and
then, having to go to Deal on holiday, where the plant was difficult
to get, he tried silverweed (P. anserina) and flowers of bramble,
which the larvae obligingly accepted and they duly became
moths. Attempts by other collectors to feed their larvae on the
common trailing tormentil (P. reptans) had not been productive
of good results, as the larvae, after beginning well, generally
ended by devouring each other, from which it was assumed that
P. reptans, although so closely allied to P. erecta, was not the proper
food. It was thus established that the natural food of the
species was P. erecta, but there may be others, seeing that Mr.
Edelsten (see Table), brought his brood through on strawberry
and bramble flowers and lettuce!!
Judging from the published descriptions and figures of the
larva it appears to vary somewhat in colour and pattern, but
is generally some shade of velvety reddish or purplish brown
with a paler medio-dorsal stripe, sometimes passing through a
series of reddish diamond-shaped spots, and there is also a pale
roundish spot sub-dorsally placed on each side of the fifth segment.
This last character, and the decidedly swollen appearance of the
4th and 5th segments, caused Mr. Edelsten to liken it to a small
edition of the larva of the Large Elephant Hawkmoth (Choero-
campa elpenor). The larva is apparently of an extremely nervous
disposition, as it is described by several writers as falling from
its food-plant and rolling itself into a ring on the least noise or
disturbance in its vicinity. When full fed it descends to the
surface of the earth and spins a tough little cocoon with frag-
ments of moss and rubbish and therein becomes a light brown
chrysalis.
C. G. Barrett in his Lepidoptera of the British Isles (vol. vi.,