FIELD BOOK OF INSECTS. 



There are about as many recipes for making the sugar 

 mixture as there are for "mother's biscuits." Baking 

 molasses usually forms the basis. Some additions are 

 any combination, or all, of stale beer, rum, asafcetida and 

 brown sugar. The mixture should spread easily but not 

 run badly. It is to be applied before dusk on tree trunks, 

 fence rails, and the like. Starting from some comfortable 

 resting place as a base, lay out a circuitous route, "sugar- 

 ing" something every few feet, and end at the resting 

 place. After dark, if luck be good, the sugared strips will 

 be full of moths and other insects eagerly sipping the 

 sweets. Several wide-mouthed cyanide killing bottles 

 (see p. 1 6) will be useful, but a net will be practically use- 

 less. It is well to have a little ether in each bottle, and 

 do not put a moth in a bottle until its predecessors have 

 stopped fluttering. Only experience will teach how to 

 catch these moths with a bottle. Some fly upward when 

 disturbed and some fly straight out or sideways, but the 

 majority drop a few inches before flying; so, when in 

 doubt, hold the bottle slightly below the prospective 

 captive. 



Light attracts many sorts of insects besides moths. 

 Street and porch lights are fruitful hunting grounds. A 

 lamp by an open window makes the room it is in a splendid 

 trap or a smaller one can be fixed up and put "in the field." 

 Plate III. shows the principle. The details vary to suit 

 collectors' whims. It is not difficult to make the box 

 collapsible so that it can easily be transported. An 

 ordinary barn-lantern set in the center of a white sheet 

 or a "bull's eye" throwing a light against a sheet hung 

 over a fence or between trees does very well. In the 

 latter cases a net will be desirable but not easy to use. 

 Last summer I used, with great success, a cheese-cloth 

 tent with a muslin ground-cloth. The tent was A-shaped, 

 about 9 x 6 ft. on the ground and 6 ft. high, with inward- 

 pointing flies at each end. A lantern (or two) was placed 

 inside. The outside worked like a sheet and the inside 

 was a trap. Both light and sugar work best where there 

 is a variety of vegetation, as where woodland passes 

 into swamp or where there is an abundance of second 

 growth. 



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