TRAPS, BEATING, REARING. 



Many other sorts of traps have been devised. Olive 

 bottles and fruit jars buried up to the neck in the ground 

 and baited with molasses, meat, etc., are simple and 

 effective. The insects caught in this way may be washed 

 off and will be nearly as good as new. Boards, daubed on 

 the under side with molasses or covering meat, are not bad. 

 Girdled branches and cut limbs, hung up, attract wood- 

 boring insects which can then be collected by beating 

 them into an upturned umbrella by sharply rapping the 

 limbs with a stout stick. In fact, an umbrella is a very 

 useful piece of apparatus. Branches, both living and 

 dead, are full of insects. The inverted umbfella catches 

 what are knocked off but does not hold them for long. 

 The collector must act quickly. . Some collectors put a 

 quill in the cork of a collecting tube as show r n in Plate III. 

 If the outer end of the quill be put over the insect, it will 

 crawl up through the quill and into the bottle from which 

 exit is difficult. If the umbrella be white, or at least lined 

 with white, the insects can be more easily seen but so can 

 the collector not by the insects particularly, but by 

 inquisitive humans and the non-committal black does 

 very well. 



Beating will knock down many larvas. Directions for 

 preserving them are given on p. 22. Some, at least, should 

 be reared and here ingenuity is of more value than volumes 

 of instructions. The beginner will doubtless be inclined 

 to give his charges more light and air than is necessary. 

 Pasteboard shoe-boxes are excellent for large caterpillars. 

 Tin boxes keep the food longer and are easily cleaned, but 

 must be watched carefully or the food will mould. If the 

 food-plant can be potted, a good contrivance is to slip a 

 lantern globe over it, sinking the bottom far enough in 

 the ground to prevent the escape of larvas in that direction 

 and covering the top with cheese-cloth. Even if the plant 

 cannot be grown, twigs can be kept fresh for some time by 

 keeping their cut ends in a small bottle of water sunk in 

 the ground and used inside a lantern globe. (See Plate 

 IV.) The twigs will be held in place arid larva? prevented 

 from drowning if cotton be loosely stuffed in the neck of 

 the bottle around the twigs. It is well to throw a thin 

 layer of dirt over the cotton so that fallen larvae can easily 



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