96 THE CLASS OF INSECTS. 



very much the same methods may be pursued in rearing the 

 larviB of Beetles, Flies, and Hymenoptera. Subterranean 

 larvjii have to be kept in moist earth, aquatic larva? must be 

 reared in aquaria, and carnivorous larvse must be supplied 

 with flesh. The larvae of Butterflies are rare ; those of 

 moths occur more frequently, while their imagos may be 

 scarce. In some years many larvfe, which are usually rare, 

 occur in abundance, and should then be reared in numbers. 

 In hunting for caterpillars bushes should be shaken and 

 beaten over newspapers or sheets, or an umbrella ; herbage 

 should be swept, and trees examined carefulh^ for leaf-rollers 

 and miners. The best specimens of moths and butterflies are 

 obtained by rearing them from the egg, or from the larva or 

 pupa. In confinement the food should be kept fresh, and the 

 box well ventilated. Tumblers covered with gauze, pasteboard 

 boxes pierced with holes and fitted with glass in the covers, or 

 large glass-jars, are very convenient to use as cages. The bot- 

 tom of such vessels may be covered with moist sand, in which 

 the food-plant of the larva may be stuck and kept fresh for 

 several days. Larger and more airy boxes, a foot square, with 

 the sides of gauze, and fitted with a door, through which a bot- 

 tle of water may be introduced, serve well. The object is to 

 keep the food-plant fresh, the air cool, the lai-va out of the sun, 

 and in fact everything in sucli a state of ecjuilibrium that the 

 larva will not feel the change of circumstances Avhen kept in 

 confinement. Most caterpillars change to pnpte in the autumn ; 

 and those which transform in the earth should be covered with 

 earth, kept damp by wet moss, and placed in the cellar until the 

 following summer. The collector in seeking for larva? should 

 carry a good number of pill-boxes, and especially a close tin 

 box, in which the leaves may be kept fresh for a long time. 

 The different forms and markings of caterpillars should be 

 noted, and they should be drawn carefully together with a leaf 

 of the food-plant, and the drawings and pupa skins, and per- 

 fect insect, be numbered to correspond. Descriptions of cat- 

 erpillars cannot be too carefully made, or too long. The 

 relative size of the head, its ornamentation, the stripes and 

 spots of the body, and the position and number of tubercles, 

 and the hairs, or fascicles of hairs, or spines and spinules. 



