222 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST: 



to another, who, unused to the almost constant supervision necessary, 

 suffers the precious larva to starve, or, by an oversight, tosses it out with 

 the withered leaves, or crushes it in the hinges of the door, or, still more 

 aggravating, thoughtlessly raises the cover and allows some long looked 

 for imagine to dart out and escape through an open window. All that he 

 will remember for the benefit of the person chiefly concerned, will be that 

 it was a moth and " seemed something peculiar." As the entomologist 

 cannot afford a separate cage for each species, and as he had probably 

 put his choice unknown in with some well known forms of which he 

 wishes simply to increase his duplicates, he probably grasps at the hope 

 that the escaped insect was one of the latter, and so defers the full reaHza- 

 tion of his loss until weeks and months have passed and all his expected 

 species have emerged, and then he hopes for better success another year, 

 and finds " life well worth living " for this and similar reasons, which only 

 an ardent naturalist can appreciate. 



In some respects too much care is as subversive of success as too 

 little. For instance, the very natural curiosity which the student feels to 

 examine into the state of the insect after it has been buried for a short 

 time in the earth. So he sifts the soil in his cage, and though he handles 

 it with all caution, the frail earthen cell in which his treasure is enclosed 

 falls in pieces, and the poor caterpillar in complete helplessness squirms 

 in the loosened earth. Despairingly he tries with clumsy fingers to re- 

 inclose it in the fragments of its cell, or attempts to form a substitute by 

 packing the earth so that it may not be smothered. In vain. In ninety- 

 nine cases in a hundred he never sees the imago. 



While the hardy pupae of most noctuids will bear any amount of 

 handling, and by their activity will beat hard the earth about them at any 

 time, a few species absolutely resent the least disturbance. I think that 

 for seven or eight successive years Dr. Riley and I tried in vain to obtain 

 the imago from a beautiful larva found every autumn in greater or less 

 numbers on Gtiaphalium, and occasionally on the Asters and some other 

 Compositce. Not being able to associate it with its species we designated 

 it the " pretty cut-worm." It was Dr. Riley's practice to have the earth 

 in his cages sifted occasionally during late autumn and winter to see how 

 the pupae were farcing, and to have each species collected into its par- 

 ticular corner or side of the cage, which was designated by the label on 

 the door. 



