304 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [July, 'OQ 



Although it was neither desirable nor practical to condense the 

 material in any of the drawers, excepting a few which contain- 

 ed duplicates, other protective measures were still available. 



To lessen the possibility of an insect becoming loose and 

 rolling around, while the drawer was being handled, every pin 

 was tested and forced more deeply into the cork or wood, 

 whenever it was considered necessary. A surprisingly large 

 number of pins had to be made more secure in this manner. 

 Since many of the drawers contained no cork, and in as much 

 as all of the specimens were mounted on brass pins, this work 

 demanded the almost constant use of the pinning forceps, as 

 well as a great deal of care. 



The next procedure was to find those specimens that were 

 loose on their supports. They were easily detected by touch- 

 ing each insect lightly and carefully with a pin. Those that 

 were not held firmly were made secure by means of a pin in- 

 serted on each side of the body of the insect. When this meth- 

 od was not possible, the desired stability was obtained by 

 placing pins in front of the costal edge of the forewings. As 

 an additional precautionary measure, the bodies of all the 

 large species were protected in the above manner, even though 

 they showed no tendency to turn on their pins. Broken speci- 

 mens were either mended or in some other way secured from 

 further injury, and a few of the very large species were 

 shelved, that is, their wings were supported by strips of card- 

 board. 



How to protect the insects so that there would be only a 

 minimum amount of damage, were the glass in the covers of 

 the drawers to break while being handled, was also a problem 

 that deserved some attention. Paper pasted to the surface of 

 the glass no doubt would afford some protection, and on the 

 strength of this supposition about 80 drawers were treated in 

 this manner, the form of their covers permitting no other 

 way of using the paper. But fortunately a suggestion kindly 

 given by Dr. Skinner was found to be much more practical, 

 namely, to place a sheet of thin, strong paper over the drawer 

 before replacing the cover. In this way the contents of over 



