800 NATURAL HISTORY OF ARTHROPODS. 



easily if an atomizer is used, there is little danger of the bottle cracking l>y the slight 

 expansion of the plaster in setting. As potassic cyanide is extremely poisonous, great 

 care should be taken in handling it, the bottle should be labelled " Poison," and kept 

 in a safe place, tightly corked, and out of the reach of children. As a general means 

 of killing insects the cyanide bottle is unsurpassed, although a few yellow or red beetles 

 may have their colors injured by the cyanide vapor. The cyanide is best renewed 

 in the bottles each spring, but I have had bottles that retained their killing power 

 several years. A successful mode of wholesale collecting with the cyanide bottle is to 

 sweep the grass, trees, blossoms, and shrubbery of all kinds with a collecting net made 

 of stout cloth, and then to empty the whole mass from the bottom of the net into the 

 cyanide bottle, where the insects will be killed, and can be picked out at leisure. Of 

 course this rough mode of treatment injures some beetles, but, on the whole, it is a 

 very productive way of collecting. In the spring leaves and rubbish from the corners 

 of pastures, and from the woods, can be sifted, by putting them in a stout cloth bag, 

 of which the bottom is made of wire-cloth such as is used to make coal-sieves, and 

 shaking the bag vigorously over a piece of white cloth. The finer bits of rubbish, 

 together with numerous torpid beetles that have hibernated beneath the leaves, will 

 fall through the sieve upon the cloth, and the insects can be easily seen. The con- 

 tents of the cloth beneath the sieve may be tied into cloth bags and taken home for 

 subsequent and more thorough examination. In the same way the rubbish deposited 

 by spring floods of rivers may be carried home for later examination on a surface of 

 white paper. A single drop of strong ammonia water may be used to drive the beetles 

 from the rubbish on the paper ; too much ammonia, however, kills them, and then they 

 are not readily found. Water-beetles are often attracted by leaving a dead mouse or 

 other small animal to decay in shallow water ; the place should be approached cau- 

 tiously a number of times daily, and the insects about the bait quickly netted. Beetles 

 which feed in bark and in toad-stools, and which run from their holes and drop when 

 disturbed, are easily trapped in large numbers by the use of a bottle partly filled with 

 strong alcohol, into the cork of which a small tin tunnel has been inserted. The tunnel 

 should be held close down beside the toad-stool, the latter suddenly picked and held 

 over the tunnel, and now and then jarred with the hand. The beetles run out, drop, 

 and tumble directly through the tunnel into the alcohol. In this way I have taken 

 repeatedly as many as fifty specimens, mostly Staphylinidas, from a single toad-stool. 

 Many leaf-eating beetles and their larvae, as well as other insects, are taken by holding 

 an inverted umbrella beneath bushes and weeds, and then shaking the plants vigor- 

 ously ; the insects drop into the umbrella, which is still more useful if it is made of 

 white cloth to enable one to see them distinctly. A hatchet, for winter collecting 

 under bark, and, in summer, a trowel for digging, are useful accessories of a coleop- 

 terist's outfit. 



Beetles should always be pinned for the collection through the right elytron, about 

 one-third of its length from its forward end, and pins made purposely for insect collec- 

 tions should be used. These pins are slender, sharp, about one and a half inches long, 

 thus lifting the insect up from the surface on which it is pinned, and lessening the 

 danger of breaking the specimen. On the under side of beetles the pin should pass 

 out between the middle and hind legs on the right side, care being taken not to have 

 it pass through or push off any of the legs. The beetles should be slid upwards on 

 the pin until about three-eighths of an inch of pin is left above the elytron. No 

 specimens should ever be pinned in such a manner that the head or one side is droop- 



