196 APPENDIX. 



stoneware dish is the best, the top ground so as to allow a 

 sheet of glass to cover it perfectly; ujDon the bottom 

 moistened sand is placed, covered by fine brass wire net- 

 ting. A few papers with their inclosed butterflies are 

 placed in it, and the cover left on for twenty-four hours 

 or thereabouts, when the insects may be handled nearly as 

 if just caught. 



Damp, grease, and museum pests are the great destroyers 

 of insect collections. To avoid the first, one has only to 

 see that his cabinet is in a dry place, with a play of air 

 around it. To avoid grease, insects should be thoroughly 

 dried before being admitted to the cabinet, and all use of 

 cedar wood in constructing the latter should be avoided; 

 benzine is perhaps the best material for removing it. 

 Against museum pests one can be safe only by a constant, 

 vigilant, searching oversight of his collection, or the use 

 of boxes which they cannot enter; even then care must be 

 taken not to introduce them one's self by placing infested 

 specimens in the collection : for this purpose it is well to 

 establish a safe quarantine. 



For a permanent cabinet nothing can excel the drawers 

 made after the Deyrolle model, now in use by the Boston 

 Society of Natural History. I have tried them for many 

 years and find them entirely pest-proof. They are made 

 [Fig. 10], with a cover of glass set in a frame which is 

 grooved along the lower edge, and thus fits tightly into a 

 narrow strip of zinc, set edgewise into a corresponding 

 groove in the drawer; the grooves beyond the point of in- 

 tersection of two sides are filled with a bit of wood firmly 

 glued in place. It is hardly necessary to say that the sides 

 of the drawer and the frame of the cover should be made 

 of hard wood ; soft wood would not retain the zinc strip. 

 The zinc should be perfectly straight and the ends well 

 matched ; if this be done, nothing can enter the box when 

 it is closed. The bottom should set in a groove in the 



