PLATE XLVI1. Pine Beauty2. Old Lady
PLATE XLVI
1. Pine Beauty2. Old Lady
This is a really lovely moth, which always comes out in the early spring. If you want to find it, you should hunt for it on the trunks of pine trees, about three or four feet from the ground. But you will have to look for it very carefully indeed, for it is one of the most difficult of all moths to see. The reason is that when its wings are folded it looks exactly like a little bit of the tree-trunk from which the outer bark has been knocked off; so that you might easily look straight at it from only two or three feet away and yet never notice it. But after dark it is very fond of feasting upon the sweet juices of sallow catkins, or “palms,” as so many people call them. And if you were to shake one of these bushes over an open umbrella on a warm evening about the beginning of April, you would very likely find a Pine Beauty lying inside it with its wings folded, and pretending to be dead.
The caterpillar of this moth is either pale brown, or bright green, or dark green in colour, with five white stripes running along its body, one on the back, and two on each side. It feeds on the leaves of the Scotch fir in June and July.
If you were to ask me why this moth should be called the “Old Lady,” I am not quite sure that I could tell you. But I think the reason must be that old ladies mostly dress in dark grey, or dark brown, or black, which are just the colours of the wings of the moth. It is quite a common insect in most parts of the country, and yet one very seldom sees it; for it always hides away during the daytime in some dark nook or cranny, where it is not very easily found. Perhaps the best place to look for it is inside a boat-house, or a summer-house, or a shed, about the end of July or during the first or second week in August. And if you find it, and frighten it away, it will very often come back again in a short time to exactly the same spot.
The caterpillar of this moth feeds on the leaves of various fruit trees, on which you may find it in May. It has a smooth, velvety body of a dingy brown colour, with a number of paler and darker markings, and on the back is a row of eight dark spots shaped just like lozenges.