192 MR. C. B. HARDENBURG 



Lome with liim. If several specimens of the one kind are 

 obtained, a few are blown for the collection, the others 

 put in a jar Avitli a few leaves of the food-plant in the hope 

 that the caterpillars will prove to be nearly full grown, 

 jjupate and disclose the imago in due time. Some more 

 careful workers will go to the trouble of collecting fresh 

 leaves of the food-plant from day to day, or at more or 

 less regular intervals, but many others feel that they can- 

 not spare the time for this, and trust to luck in obtaining 

 pupa and adult. Such work is, of course, of very little 

 value, but even many of the most careful breeders, while 

 "noting the various transformations, do not take the 

 trouble to write them down, and the result is that in 

 trusting entirely to memory, man}' details are forgotten 

 and even such as are remembered are not available to 

 other collectors. 



An immense amount of data as to food-plants, translor- 

 mations. seasonal abundance, etc., have (hus been 

 gathered by the various entomologists but have not been 

 put on record and are thus inaccessible to other^^. This 

 is a groat pit}' as it simply means that another worker 

 has to do the same things all over again. 



Now, what is worth doing at all, is w^orth doing well, 

 and therefore, a little extra trouble should be taken and 

 all the observations written down. Even if the collector 

 himself does not feel inclined to publish the data (and F 

 have noted that some of our most careful and reliable 

 breeders are very shy of having their records published, 

 because they are incomplete) they can be of great service 

 to one who makes the immature stages his special study. 



I have found the following scheme to work very well in 

 the wattle insect investigations at New Hanover, and 

 while not perfect, publish it here in the hope that it may 

 be of service to otliers who, quite likely, may improve on 

 on it to suit their own conditions. 



Let us suppose a miscellaneous lot of caterpillars has 

 been found, and secured with parts of their food-plants. 

 Arriving home we carefully sort out the caterpillars into 



