68 THE entomologist's record. 



above mentioned Tortrix, I kill with tobacco smoke or chloroform and 

 the larger ones with — what no one up to the present seems to have 

 made much mention of, but what I consider invaluable — a solution 

 of oxalic acid. I use it for such things as SPHiNGiDiE, most Bombyces, 

 NoTODONTiD^, so77ie large Noctu^, and all colours which seem to be 

 affected by ammonia. A steel pen with one nib broken off is a good 

 thing to use. Dip it in the acid and introduce it well into the 

 underside of the thorax ; a steel pen, however, quickly corrodes if left 

 in the acid, but an entomological friend made me a very good 

 pricker of a mixture of silver and platinum, which does not corrode 

 although constantly in the acid. It is very fine (about one-sixteenth of 

 an inch in diameter), tubular, in order that it may take up a quantity of 

 the acid, and finely pointed, so that a very small moth can be pricked 

 with it. For all small species that I want to kill with oxalic acid, I find 

 it best to put them into a cyanide bottle first, just long enough to quiet 

 them, or chloroform them, which is perhaps just as easy ; larger species 

 will generall) allow themselves to be picked out of the breeding cages 

 and undergo the operation without an anaesthetic ! If not, a drop of 

 chloroform soon quiets them ; of course the object is to get the wings 

 back so as to hold them with the thumb and finger. Cyanide I don't 

 like at its best. How is one to leave the moths in cyanide from 

 thirty-six to forty-eight hours ? For fifty or sixty macros you would 

 want about twenty bottles to accommodate them, and as these are to 

 remain in the bottles two days you will probably require another 

 twenty bottles for the next day's captures. This seems to be rather an 

 undertaking, especially if you are away from home ; and we may put 

 a good deal of bad setting down to the use of the cyanide bottle, 

 particularly among the micros. Compared with the above, how easy 

 is the use of ammonia ; you come home after a hard day's collecting, 

 and after taking out the very few specimens you do not care to trust 

 in ammonia, turn out your boxes into the killing tin, perhaps a hundred 

 or more micros among them (which I should hardly care to imagine in 

 cyanide bottles), and the next morning — all beautifully ready to bCt. I 

 may add that if Mr. Turner made a small hole in the lids of his 

 boxes with a thick needle, red hot, it would save him the trouble of 

 tilting the lids when putting them into the ammonia. This refers to 

 glass bottomed boxes ; chip boxes do not need it as the ammonia 

 fumes will penetrate them. The size of my killing tin may be a hint 

 to some, it is about fourteen or fifteen inches high, by about five in 

 diameter. — Wm. Farren, Union Road, Cambridge. 



The Fauna of South London. — Following up the suggestion of 

 Mr. H. J. Turner, in the Record for last month, that other entomolo- 

 gists should record their observations as a contribution towards the 

 fauna of our suburban districts, I have looked up the notes of my cap- 

 tures in Forest Hill and Sydenham, the district of which may be taken 

 as a continuation of Brockley, and thus extending the distance from 

 Charing Cross to about 6i miles. I find I have taken most of the 

 insects noted by Mr. Turner, together with many others not noted by 

 him. My observations extend over a period of six years (1885-1890). 

 I have not, however, worked the district with a view of ascertaining 

 what it will yield, as my time has been too limited for that ; my work 

 has been principally at fences, and occasionally at the lamps. I 



