THE BEAUTIFUL HOOK-TIP (_Laspeyria flexula_).
Some specimens are browner and others greyer than that shown on Plate 36,
Fig. 1; the pale even lines are generally edged with reddish brown, and the
notch under the tip of the wing is margined with the same colour.
The caterpillar has the first and second pairs of prolegs very short, and
below the brown-ringed spiracles there is a projecting ridge, fringed with
a row of fleshy greenish-white filaments, some of which are forked.
Bluish-green, sometimes tinged with ochreous; raised dots, black at the
tips, on a base of whitish green; along the middle of the back is a series
of darker green spear-points, and beyond this on each side a pale line,
edged above by a fine wavy black line, and below by a darker green line;
the eighth and eleventh rings of the body darker than the others. (Abridged
from description by Buckler.) It feeds on lichens growing upon larch,
spruce, hawthorn, sloe, fruit trees, etc., from September to May. The moth
is out in June, July, and August, and may be beaten from the branches of
trees, and from hedges, but the flushing of a specimen in this way is
always a more or less casual event. It has been taken on several occasions
at street lamps, and also in illuminated moth traps.
In England the species seems to be widely distributed over the southern
counties to Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire; and in the east to Norfolk. It
has also been recorded from Derbyshire (one), and Yorkshire (two).