PLATE XXXV1. Brimstone2. Canary-Shouldered Thorn3. Pepper and Salt
PLATE XXXV
1. Brimstone2. Canary-Shouldered Thorn3. Pepper and Salt
There are several different kinds of “Thorn” moths, but you can always tell the Canary-Shouldered Thorn from the others by just looking at the middle part of its body, which is thickly covered with very long hairs of a bright canary yellow. It appears on the wing in August, and is very fond of flying into a lighted room after dark. Sometimes, too, it will sit on the glass of a street-lamp and remain there all night long without moving, gazing at the flame within. If it can get inside the lamp, it will often burn its wings so badly that it cannot fly away. And just now and then you may find it sitting on a fence, or on the trunk of a tree.
The caterpillar of this moth is one of the “loopers,” and is dark brown in colour, with lighter markings, and with two little humps on its back. Look for it on the leaves of birch, lime, elder, oak, and fruit trees during the month of June. About the first week in July it spins a little silken cocoon, and turns into a light brown chrysalis, with a few whitish markings.
No doubt you will think that this is rather an odd name to give to a moth, but it is a very suitable one, for the wings of this insect really do look very much as if they had been first covered with salt, and then sprinkled thickly with black pepper. But it varies a good deal in its markings, for sometimes the wings look as if they were nearly all salt, and sometimes they look as if they were nearly all pepper. And if the moth is caught in the north of England or in Scotland, strange to say, it is nearly always much darker than when it is caught in the south.
The caterpillar, too, varies almost as much in colour as the moth. Sometimes it is reddish-brown; sometimes it is greenish-brown; sometimes it is yellowish-brown. But it always looks very much like a piece of stick; and it always has eight raised reddish spots on its back, which look just like buds before they begin to burst into leaf. You may find it in August, feeding on the leaves of lime, birch, and oak trees. In September it buries itself in the ground, and changes to a rather fat brown chrysalis, out of which the moth appears in the following May.