After the primary moult the ground color turns into extra smoky, the divisions velvety black, and on each ring a triangular orange spot seems; these markings turn out to be extra conspicuous later on, and by the top of October, when it hibernates, they’re very distinct. The male flies quickly over the heather by day at the latter end of May or beginning of June; its flight is jerking or zigzag, and its object is evidently to find the feminine, who not often strikes till impregnation has taken place. It hatched on April 26, was reared on plum, pupated early in June, and the moth, a darkish grey feminine, emerged on July 31. Another caterpillar that hatched on May 1, and two others from still later hatchings, were then in chrysalis. The female, which is bigger than the male, has a conspicuous greyish anal tuft, the hairs from which she uses to cover over her pale oily green eggs when they’re deposited in clusters on twigs of hawthorn or sloe in February or March. Head ochreous brown, thickly dotted with black and clothed with pale hairs.
Head brown, collar brownish, tipped with pale ochreous within the male. The caterpillar is black or greyish black, with reddish brown hairs, and a series of black-edged yellowish brown, or reddish brown blotches on every aspect of the back; these blotches are outlined in pale yellowish and often connected by a line of the same color. This is a moderately thinly scaled moth; the general coloration is sooty brown; the wings are suffused more or less with greyish; there are two pale ochreous cross strains on the fore wings, the primary enclosing a reddish brown basal patch; hind wings fairly paler with a diffuse whitish central band; fringes brown chequered with pale ochreous. There are small ducts leading from the testicles into the pocket which accommodates the prostate fluid. The Small Eggar (Eriogaster lanestris). In Southern England the caterpillars hatch from the egg in August and often hibernate when quite small. The moth is out in August and September, and happens in wooded districts all through the southern half of England, however northwards from the Midlands it is unusual; it’s present in several parts of Scotland to Inverness. Alternatively, maybe owing to hostile weather circumstances, feeding after hibernation could also be continued properly on into the autumn, when the caterpillars pupate, however emergence of the moth is postponed until the following year, the second after hatching from the egg.
The moth does not emerge until October, and in that month, however more continuously in November and December, the males could also be seen around gas lamps fairly late at evening. The example figured on Plate 51 was from eggs laid by a female moth in Selkirk, South Scotland. The late Richard Weaver, who gave it the English name of the “Scotch Eggar,” took specimens of the moth at Rannoch in 1845, and he discovered caterpillars in that yr, in addition to in 1844 and 1846. It’s now well-known to occur not only in Scotland, together with the Hebrides and Orkneys, but in addition on the moors of Northern England, and in Ireland and Wales. The vary abroad is thru Central and Northern Europe to Southern Lapland, and eastward to Siberia and Amurland. Newman, within the Entomologist for 1845, gives a life history of the Northern Eggar (callunæ), and from this the following details are extracted.
The egg of callunæ is figured on Plate 55. It appears slightly polished, and in color is pale brown mottled with darker brown. The brown chrysalis is enclosed in a strong-looking oval cocoon of a pale ochreous or whitish colour. The full-grown caterpillar of quercus, beneath the brownish fur with which the physique is clothed, is darkish brown on the back and fairly violet brown on the sides; the ring divisions are velvety black; there is a white stripe along every aspect and below the stripe some reddish marks; the ring nearest the pinnacle is edged with reddish, and the following two rings every have two reddish centred white spots. The caterpillar may be found from April to June on hawthorn and sloe, and it is said additionally on birch, oak, sallow, apple, bramble, etc. People who I have discovered resting by day on shoots of hawthorn, apparently having fun with the sunshine, have almost invariably been “ichneumoned”; but others that got here up after sunset to feed on the shoots had been usually wholesome.
