THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 295 



liking for sugar ; and of this year's captures I will now proceed 

 to speak. 



I may premise that 1 brush my sugar — made into syrup 

 with beer, and flavoured with rum — at about sunset on two 

 espalier apple-trees, standing some few yards apart. I brush 

 it in one continuous streak, from about five feet high to 

 within a foot or two of the ground : from this some thin lines 

 of the syrup will run, on which many moths will settle in 

 preference. I have read much of favourable nights, — calm, 

 dark, warm, moist; I cannot say that I have found any kind 

 of night peculiarly favourable or otherwise. My most 

 successful night of the later part of this season was on the 

 16lh of October, when the moon, nearly full, was shining 

 brightly; the wind north-east, and a good deal of it; the 

 thermometer lower than usual (it fell to S3^ that night): and 

 yet I took eight or nine species, including three X. semi- 

 brunnea, and C. exolela and A, aprilina. 



1 began to sugar early in August, and took my last moth 

 November 3rd. At the commencement I did not possess one 

 of those useful oval zinc boxes which I subsequently procured, 

 but only a cyanide bottle, yet with this I missed very few. I 

 took in it three C. nupla, though how so large a moth got in 

 without injury is a mystery. The last month 1 have used the 

 oval box, with bruised laurel-leaves, adding to them a little 

 chloroform just before using, as I find the moth drops in 

 more readily on account of the vapour, and is almost instantly 

 rendered quiet, if not insensible, so that the box is ready for 

 another capture. 1 have taken eight or ten insects at one 

 visit quite rapidly ; and if a small piece of leno be put into 

 the box, the moths catch their feet in its meshes, and do not 

 injure each other. To prevent the stiffness consequent upon 

 death by chloroform, I put the captures I wish to retain, after 

 examination, into a relaxing box, i.e. a mustard-tin, contain- 

 ing bruised laurel-leaves covered wiih leno, and give the 

 rejected ones a chance for their lives by placing them on the 

 grass, and 1 find that they nearly all recover. Whether their 

 narrow escape renders them teetotallers for ever after, I have 

 not ascertained. I fear not, unless they are much more 

 virtuous than the genus homo. 



The species I have taken in the three months on the two 

 trees are as follows : — 



T.. batis, one; B. glandifera and B. perla, common; 



