PRESERVATION OF INSECTS, 363 



cimens, but to ascertain fkcts, we advise the breeding 

 of every insect whose history it is required to inves- 

 tigate. 



In order to succeed in this object, it will be indis- 

 pensable to place the insects as much as possible in 

 their natural circumstances. Those who breed moths 

 and butterflies to procure specimens, feed them in 

 boxes, into which a branch of the plant each feeds on 

 is placed in a straight-necked phial of water, to keep 

 it fresh. We have found it preferable to give them 

 fresh leaves twice or thrice a day, for the plants kept 

 in water are apt to scour and kill the insects. When 

 we have been unprovided with boxes, we have used 

 ale-glasses or glass tumblers with success, either turn- 

 ing them bottom upwards, and admitting air round the 

 edges by inserting slips of card, or covering them 

 with gauze at top. Such glasses seem to have been 

 the chief apparatus used by Reaumur, Bonnet, and 

 De Geer, in those researches which are quite unrival- 

 led in our own days. Small pasteboard boxes, like 

 those made for ladies' caps, answer very well when 

 covered with gauze. 



The breeding-cage employed by Mr Stephens he 

 has thus described : — ^ The length of the box is 

 twenty inches ; height twelve ; and breadth six ; and 

 it is divided into five compartments. Its lower half 

 is constructed entiiely of wood, and the upper of 

 coarse gauze, stretched upon wooden or wire frames ; 

 each compartment has a separate door, and is, more- 

 over, furnished with a phial in the centre, for the 

 purpose of containing water, in which the food is 

 kept fresh ; and is half-filled with a mixture of fine 

 earth and the dust from the inside of rotten trees, the 

 latter article being added for the purpose of rendering 

 the former less binding upon the jmpcB* as well as 



* The French naturalists use fine dry sand. See ' Manuel 

 du Naturalisto Preparatcur. ' 



