290 ENTOMOLOGY. 



The prince of entomotomists was Straus-Durckheim. Pro- 

 fessor Agassiz once told us that it was Straus's habit, before 

 beginning his day's work, to eat a light breakfast and abstain 

 from coffee, so that his hands should not shake. Straus's 

 great work on the anatomy of the cockchafer and his 

 "Traite pratique et theorique d'anatomie comparative" 

 are models of what such work is and how it should be done. 

 The indispensable instruments for entomotomy are a flat 

 tin dish, with braces soldered within near the bottom to 

 hold down a piece of thin cork, to which the insect may be 

 pinned,* or a flat glass or porcelain dish, in which melted 

 wax has been poured; for microscopic dissection a large 

 glass cell a fourth of an inch thick, in which melted wax 

 has been poured. Other tools are delicate forceps, scissors, 

 straight and curved (also delicate spring-scissors, being a 

 pair of scissors attached to a long handle, with one blade 

 moving on a spring, we find very useful); needles of different 

 sizes mounted in handles, some of them ground to a knife- 

 edge, and fine narrow scalpels and eye-knives; also an in- 

 jecting-syringe, with fine points of different sizes, and 

 pipettes; though an ordinary hypodermic syringe will 

 answer. The beginner should select for his first attempt at 

 insect anatomy the dissection of a large locust, such as 

 Acrydium americanum. or (Edipoda Carolina, or a katydid, 

 with the aid of the description of the internal anatomy of 

 Caloptenus on pp. 7-17. By carefully cutting along 



* " In dissecting insects and other small forms one occasionally 

 experiences considerable difficulty iu fastening the object in the dis- 

 secting-pan. Pius are inconvenient as they are in the way, and 

 besides they frequently injure portions of the specimen. These diffi- 

 culties may, however, be avoided by partially imbedding the object 

 in wax or paraffiue, which, however, should not extend above the 

 middle line of the body. The paraffine and the embedded object may 

 then be readily fastened in the dissecting-tank, or, when it is necessary 

 to stop operations, the paraffiue and object may be placed in alcohol. 

 (J. S. Kiugsley in Science Kecord, it. 86.) Prof. C. H. Stowell 

 uses an empty blacking box, filled to the depth of about inch with 

 melted beeswax, in which while melted a grasshopper, etc., is placed 

 iu the desired position, and the whole left to cool, when hard water is 

 poured in and the dissection begun. (The Microscope, iv., 1884, 277.) 



