270 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



The Collembola, being all very soft-bodied, must be handled with great 

 delicacy to avoid injuring them. The best implement for the purpose is the 

 fine red sable brush used for oil painting, American size No. 1, (English size 

 00 or 0), preferably of the round shape, but the flat will do. The long handles 

 may be cut down to a length of three or four inches convenient for the pocket 

 or vial case. In a pinch an emergency brush can be made by chewing the en(i 

 of a small succulent twig into fibres. 



A great many Collembolans live under the bark of more or less rotten logs 

 and stumps, and when collecting in this habitat a large pocket knife is very useful 

 to separate the layers of bark. Also the student, unless he has exceptional 

 eyesight, will find a watchmaker's glass necessary to discover the smaller speci- 

 mens. A glass of two and a half inch or at most two inch focus is strong enough. 

 Any higher magnification leaves too small a working distance. To prevent 

 dewing of the glass in cool weather, two or three holes of about 4 mm. diameter 

 should be bored through the mounting. 



As any small object dropped into forest litter or long grass is very hard 

 to find, I tie the collecting brush and the watchmaker's glass at either end of a 

 fine string about 18 inches long This insures their safety, leaves the hands 

 free, and enables the brush to be found without taking the eye off the quarry. 

 Of course, like every other good thing, the arrangement has its drawbacks. 

 But when the cord catches on some obstruction just as a particularly fine speci- 

 men has been sighted, and the glass is jerked out of the collector's eye, curses 

 both loud and deep will be found to afford considerable relief to many temper- 

 mert'ts. 



The very ingenious collector devised by Berlese is an admirable instru- 

 ment for automatically extracting springtails and other small creatures from 

 the debris of forests and such like materials But for adequate results the 

 apparatus must be employed on a larger scale than is possible for an amateur 

 without any special laboratory. And so, while I have used a small Berlese 

 collector with some success, I prefer to sift for the insects in the open. My 

 sieve consists of a wooden hoop 12 inches in diameter and one inch deep, to 

 which is attached a sleeve of ticking about 10 inches long, while the netting is 

 wire cloth of 12 meshes to the inch. A black silk handkerchief and a white 

 linen one complete the outfit. In practice, one sits down in a likely place, 

 puts a couple of handfuls of dead leaves into the sieve and shakes it over the 

 handkerchief spread on the knees. Then by means of the brush, the dislodged 

 Collembolans are transferred to a vial. Changing occasionally from the black 

 to the white handkerchief, or vice versa, often reveals- many minute and un 

 suspected insects of the contrasting hue. 



For springtails of a difl"erent milieu a very useful device is a tin funnel 

 31/2 inches or 4 inches in diameter at the mouth, such as can be bought at any 

 hardware store for a few cents. A fair- sized, straight-;sided bottle is corked to 

 the tip of the funnel, and the implement is used to sweep herbage, the surface 

 of pools, wet sand and similar formations. The leaping insects are caught in 

 the funnel, and a sharp tap from time to time shakes them from the slippery 

 sides into the bottle. Also the easiest way to capture specimens on loose pieces 

 of bark is to shake them ofi" into the funnel. And the catch can be safely trans- 

 ferred from the funnel bottle to the regular collecting tube by inserting the 



