540 ENTOMOLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS, &C. 
has often struck me that the cavity of a modern hat, if 
lined with cork, might be made a very useful receptacle 
for these animals in a long excursion. Indeed, an active 
Entomologist is never at a loss for an apparatus, but 
often makes his most valuable captures when unprovided 
with other instruments than his hands and eyes. A 
careful survey of the trunk and branches of trees and 
shrubs, particularly of the underside of their leaves, 
seldom fails to detect many a lurking moth or beetle, 
which may be transfixed or otherwise captured with 
little trouble by an expert hand. In this way an inge- 
nious collector, who scarcely knew what a net of any 
kind was, told me he had made his whole collection, 
which was rather extensive. It is, in fact, only by thus 
detecting them when reposing, and adroitly shutting them 
up along with the leaf on which they sit, in a box, that 
minute moths (whose beauty and freshness the slightest 
handling destroys) can ordinarily be taken without being 
injured. The boxes containing them should afterwards 
be exposed to the action of heat, a low degree of which 
will destroy them. 
Enough has been said upon the best modes of catching 
insects : — I shall next attempt to give you some further 
instructions as to the most effectual one of destroying 
them when caught, and to point out how you are to pro- 
ceed with them after they are dead. As I sufficiently 
rebutted the charge of cruelty in a former letter*, it will 
not be necessary to enter here into that subject. 
I have before recommended to you the use of spirits 
' I/FTTtR II. 
