April, '04] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. I27 



Part II. — Collecting. 



The favorite European practice is to bring home the speci- 

 mens alive, each in a small willow-chip pill box, killing them 

 in the evening or the next morning just before expanding. 

 The chief merit of this system is in the naturally relaxed con- 

 dition of the moths, but its disadvantages seem to me to far 

 outweigh the advantages, principally in the large bulk and 

 great number of boxes that have to be carried, the danger of 

 the moths flj'ing around in the confined space and losing their 

 scales, and the always possible catastrophe of a stumble or fall 

 by which a goodly number of the fragile boxes will be reduced 

 to splinters. 



Of course, the ideal way of obtaining flawless specimens of 

 Micro-Lepidoptera is by breeding, which will be the subject of 

 the next paper ; but as many specimens can be taken with a 

 net, that may never be secured in any other way, it is desirable 

 to have the apparatus to fit the smallness of the specimens and 

 to be as simple as possible. 



The Net. — The net is the most important part of the 

 outfit ; and I have gradually reduced the size of the one I use 

 to only about half the diameter of the common butterfly kind. 

 It is six inches in diameter at the top, and in length twice its 

 diameter or twelve inches (the same ratio should be used for 

 any diameter). I have tried all sorts of patent and folding 

 nets, but they all seem to be weak in some part, and give out 

 when most needed. A frame and stick I have used constantly 

 for over three years was made as follows : 



The frame is a piece of three-sixteenths diameter spring 

 brass wire, total length about twenty-four inches, bent in a 

 circle, with two four-inch straight ends, like Fig. 10. 

 The .stick is a slender bamboo cane, cut to a length 

 of two feet ; both ends should terminate at a joint. 

 In the smaller end, just below the joint, cut a small 

 hole on each side, and below the holes for two or 

 three inches wrap the bamboo with fishing cord to 

 stiffen it and prevent the holes from becoming cracks. The 

 stick can also be divided in the middle, with a pair of ferrules 

 from an old fishing rod securely fitted to the cut ends ; which 



