52 CURIOSITIES or entomology. 



Mr. T. W. Wood says : " I have never seen the insect 

 touch the wild parsley for any purpose but sleep, as it visits 

 the little pink geranium, during sunshine, for the nectar it 

 contains, at which time the wings are open, although not 

 widely expanded. If the collector requires a few very fresh 

 and uninjured specimens of this insect, he need only furnish 

 himself with a few hoxes, and walking along the hedgerows 

 on a calm evening in May, his eyes will be gladdened by the 

 pretty Avhite bunches of wild parsley-blossom in great pro- 

 fusion, amongst which, and simulating them exactly, he will 

 be sure either to spy or pass by the orange-tip. In the 

 former case, all that is necessary is to open a box and close it 

 very gently upon butterfly and flower, severing the flower 

 stem outside the box, and placing it with its contents in his 

 pocket. On arriving home, he will generally find that the 

 insect has not moved in the least. Care should, however, be 

 taken that the box is carried steadily, and that only a small 

 piece of the blossom is enclosed, otherwise it may occupy 

 too much room in the box, and the butterfly Avill be damaged 

 in consequence. If carefully managed, the insect will not 

 have been touched, and may uoav be killed without touch- 

 ing it, by placing the l»ox under a tumbler with a few 

 drops of Scheele's prussic acid on blotting pajjcr, and 

 in a very few moments the beautiful creature will be 

 found lying dead and stiff at the bottom of the box ; but it 

 will be sure to relax the next day, and will then be fit for 

 setting. This mode of capture I would recommend as being- 

 preferable in many respects to the one usually adopted with 

 butterflies. There is no fluttering, and consequent damage, 

 while in the net ; the collector will not have to endanger his 

 lind)S by running madly over sometimes very uneven gn)und, 

 with eye necessarily fixed only upon the one object of pursuit^ 

 which, when caught in the net, has to be disabled^ by a pinch 

 in the thorax, intended to kill, a\ hich it never does ; but the 

 1)eauty and symmetry of form are often irretrievably injured 

 by fracture of the outer skin or shell, which in all insects is 

 their chief framework ; legs are frequently broken off, and 

 niiicli beautiful down removed. By my phni all these draw- 



