II4 HULL SCIENTIFIC AND FIELD NATURALISTS’ CLUB. 
enough to light the lantern. Never smoke when examining 
for moths, or you will lose many a rarity. When quite dark, 
light the lamp and go carefully over the trees. 
My lantern isa portable flat one, burning with vapour of 
benzoline, and is, I believe, called a ‘‘ sponge spirit lamp.” 
It is far more cleanly than oil. The lantern has a drawer for 
matches, and, instead of having a ‘‘ bull’s eye”’ in front, has a 
circular piece of plate glass, with bevelled edges. This 
arrangement allows the light to spread more than the ‘ bull’s 
eye,’”’ and enables one more easily to take the moth with the 
net, should it try to escape. No one ought to rely upon his 
chip boxes or cyanide bottle alone, when he goes his round; 
some moths are proverbially skittish, or fall to the ground and 
are lost among the herbage, if a hand net is not placed beneath 
them. The old plan of using a chip box for each specimen is, 
I think, the best, but many prefer the cyanide bottle. If the 
moths are left for twelve hours in the bottle they lose much of 
their rigidity. 
In barren places, without trees, the sugar may be applied 
to stones and rocks, and on the sea shore or on sand hills, 
pieces of chip or wood may be sugared and stuck in the 
ground; or in the event of these being not procurable, heads 
of thistles or bents (Ammophila) may be tied into bundles and 
smeared with the enticing lure; such localities often yield rare 
Agroti. I have generally found damp, dark nights, with a soft 
breeze blowing, the best, but have also had the most excellent 
collecting even during the most brilliant moonshine. Some 
writers recommend sugaring a tree every ten yards or so; my 
plan has been to sugar every suitable and accessible tree, how- 
ever near each other. In the spring the catkins of willows 
and sallows ought to be visited and carefully examined by 
means of a bull’s-eye lantern. Many hybernated moths will 
be found in company with the J@niocampide. Again, in the 
autumn the flower spikes of the common reed (Arundo phrag- 
mites) should be visited after nightfall. In my excursions [| 
usually carry my apparatus, lamp, &c., in a leathern wallet, 
which is suspended by rings to a stout leather waist belt. 
This arrangement leaves the shoulders and chest free. 
BITTERN NEAR BEVERLEY.—A fine specimen of the Bittern 
(Botaurus stellaris) was shot at the side of a ditch near 
Beverley, on 22nd December. It is six years since this 
species has occurred in this district.—J. R. Lowruer, Crane 
Hill, Beverley, 1st January, 1g00.* 
* Reorinted from the Naturalist. 
