hodce] NATURE-STUDY WORK WITH I XSECTS 269 



Standard insect cases are too large and cumbersome, besides being 

 too expensive for common school use. I have found a number of 

 teachers, too, who objected to showing children insects with pins 

 sticking through them. Teaching experience also proves that if we 

 have more than one kind of insect before the class at the same time, 

 great distraction and confusion is apt to result. 



All the requirements of a serviceable school collection are met by 

 the simple insect mounting case described in Chapter IV of my book, 

 "Nature-Study and Life." I do not need to repeat the description 

 there given. However, one improvement in the method has been so 

 widely adopted and has given rise to so much inquiry that I am glad 

 of the opportunity to place a description of it on record. I refer to 

 the "insect mounting strips," first made according to my specifications 

 by the A. I. Root Co., of Medina, Ohio, in 1902. The device has 

 since become a recognized piece of nature-study apparatus and is kept 

 in stock and sold by this firm, although, I suppose, any manufacturer 

 of bee-keepers supplies could fill an order on short notice. The cases 

 have been used successfully for ants' nests, and I have had clothes 

 moths live in them with woolen cloth of different colors to feed upon for 

 nearly two years sealed up tight with the passe-partout. In a word 

 the method consists in mounting the insects between two plates of 

 glass with strips of thin wood glued around the edges of one of the 

 glass plates to keep the glasses the proper distance apart. To plane 

 out and fit the four little strips was more trouble than all the rest of 

 the work of making the mount. It was only when confronted by a 

 class of 140 in laboratory nature-study at the Indiana University 

 Summer School — when I had expected not more than 10 — that 

 necessity became the mother of invention and hit upon a more 

 expeditious method. This consisted in having the wood strips made 

 in a single piece, like the common honey section, cut so as to bend 

 into a rectangular frame of the desired size. My first order was for 

 9,000 "Insect Mounting Strips." it was given Friday morning and 

 we had them for use in the laboratory in Bloomington the following 

 Tuesday. The bill was $12.50 — approximately ten frames for one 

 cent, less for the smaller sizes and a little more for the larger. 



The sizes were made for convenience in handling and at the same 

 time to utilize waste negatives of four by five and five by seven inches; 

 the strips being cut in three widths, one-quarter, three-eighths and 

 one-half inch, to fit specimen insects of different thicknesses. For 

 small insects the size two by five inches was adopted, because 

 this could be covered by cutting a four by five glass in two. 



