02 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 

 As the Editor expresses willingness to receive notes on any entomo- 

 logical subject, I give my experience with " vertical " inflation of 

 caterpillars. I have done a great deal of inflating, and find three bad 

 faults with the common horizontal ovens. 



ist. The air pressure necessary to extend the caterpillar often is 

 enough to force the skin out of shape. 



2nd. By beginning the drying at the tail-end one sometimes 

 discolours the rear segments when it comes to using heat sufficient for 

 stewing the juices out of the head. 



3rd. The caterpillar has to be twirled around, and as the hand 

 becomes tired pencils and hairs are likely to be rubbed off. 



At the end of 1902 I took my lamp-chimney oven, cut a few notches 

 at the bottom for ventilation and turned it upright on a sand bath heated 

 from below. In this ray specimens dried like a charm. Gravity helping, 

 almost no air was needed, there was no twirling, and the heads received 

 the first and greatest heat. I got good results with such caterpillars as 

 full-grown Acronycta America?ia, almost impossible to inflate by the usual 

 method. Being hurried, I, in one or two instances, finished up the tail 

 ends of the fleshy specimens in the ordinary oven, and I hardly did work 

 enough to conclusively prove the experiment. Still, it is full of 

 possibilities, and it is perfectly obvious that with twirling given up one can 

 use a water column for air pressure and attend to several ovens at the 

 same time. 



With the exception of Mr. Merrick's " Haploas," photographed in 

 the January number of the Entomological News, the writer never saw a 

 drawer of specimens that were even approximately in line. I know my 

 own all veer to the right. . This winter I sawed off a wooden T-square, 

 and now by running it along the front edge every pin goes in 

 mathematically correct. 



Mr. Lyman's statement about the ease of raising Papilio brevicaiida 

 is fully endorsed. I once had a dozen or thirteen of these caterpillars ; 

 fed them first on parsley, then on parsnip tops, and finally on their native 

 food-plants, obtained from the Lower Provinces by the kindness of Mr. 

 Winn. They all went into pupa, were brought into the kitchen about 

 Christmas time, and all but one hatched. Dwight Brainerd, 



