PRESERVATION OF INSECTS. 36^ 



eiinens, but to ascertain facts, we advise the breeding 

 of every insect wiiose history it is required to inves-i 



tig;ate. 



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-o-lasses or glass tumblers with success, either turn- 

 ing "them bottom upwards, and admitting air round 

 the edges by insertinoj 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 un- 

 rivalled 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 entirely of wood, and the upper of 

 coarse gauze, stretched upon wooden or wireframes ; 

 each compartment has a separate door, and is, m'ore- 

 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 b'eing added for the purpose of rendering 

 the former less binding upon the piipcB^, as well" as 



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

 Naturaliste L'reparateur.' 



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