62 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



of medium roughness, for perfectly smooth ones, such as beech and young 

 poplars, are as bad as those too rough, and rarely pay for the trouble. 

 Spread the mixture on the leeward side of the tree, in a longish patch, at 

 about the heighth of your face from the ground, as near sun set as 

 possible as to time. Then comes a quiet pipe or two until it is dark 

 enough to light the lantern. Never smoke when examining for moths, or 

 you will lose many a rarity. When quite dark, light the lamp and go 

 carefully over the trees. 



My lantern is a portable flat one, burning the vapor of benzoline, and 

 is, I believe, called a " sponge spirit lamp." It is far more cleanly than 

 oil. The lantern has a drawer for matches, and instead of having a 

 "bull's eye" in front, has a circular piece of plate glass, with bevelled 

 edges. This arrangement allows the light to spread more than the 

 " bull's eye," and enables one more easily to take the moth with the net, 

 should it try to escape. No one ought to rely upon his chip boxes or 

 cyanide bottle alone, when he goes his round : some moths are proverbi- 

 ally skittish, or fall to the ground and are lost among the herbage, if a 

 hand net is not placed beneath them. The old plan of using a chip box 

 for each specimen is, I think, the best, but many prefer the cyanide bottle. 

 If the moths are left for twelve hours in the bottle they lose much of their 

 rigidity. 



In barren places, without trees, the sugar may be applied to stones 

 and rocks, and on the sea shore or on sand hills, pieces of chip or wood 

 may be sugared and stuck in the ground ; or, in the event of these being 

 not procurable, heads of thistles or bents ( Ammophila) may be tied into 

 bundles and smeared with the enticing lure ; such localities often yield 

 rare Agroti. I have generally found damp, dark nights, with a soft breeze 

 blowing, the best, but have also had most excellent collecting even during 

 the most brilliant moonshine. Some writers recommend sugaring a tree 

 every ten yards or so ; my plan has been to sugar every suitable and 

 accessible tree, however near each other. In the spring the catkins of 

 willows and sallows ought to be visited and carefully examined by means 

 of a bull's-eye lantern. Many hybernated moths will be found in company 

 with the T?eniocampidre. Again, in the autumn the flower spikes of the 

 common reed ( Arwido pJwagmites ) should be visited after nightfall. In 

 my excursions I usually carry my apparatus, lamp, &c, in a leathern 

 wallet, which is suspended by rings to a stout leather waist belt. This 

 arrangement leaves the shoulders and chest free. 



