dl 
Iam tempted to enumerate some of the discouraging circumstances encoun- 
tered by the biologist in this field. 
Among the Lepidoptera, a majority of the Bombycide, Geometride and 
Noctwide adapt themselves readily to the conditions of the rearing cage. They 
accept the food provided and make the best of it, even after it has become a 
little dry, which must sometimes occur when the caretaker is pressed for time, 
They thrive in the closer and darker air, and take such exercise as they require 
within their narrow walls of glass and wire-cloth, and when the metamorphic 
impulse comes, they contentedly weave their cocoons in the corners of their 
prison, or bury themseves in the two or three inches of cemeterial earth in the 
bottom of the cage, and safely pass those mysterious transformations which 
give to this class of beings their pre-eminent interest. 
But there is a great deal of individuality, or rather, specificality, in insects, 
and not infrequently specimens of larvee are found for which the collector taxes 
his ingenuity in vain to provide. Not the freshest of leaves, the cleanest swept 
earth or the most well-aired of cages wiil seem to promote their development. 
They wander about the cage with an exhausting activity that pathetically 
suggests a realisation of their imprisoned condition. They nibble languidly at 
their food, and aimlessly spin mats of web in inconvenient places, over the cracks 
of the door or cover, for instance, and, before long, comes the morning, when 
they are discovered dead and discolored in the bottom of the cage, aid no more 
of them to be obtained until another season. Or perhaps the cocoons are spun or 
the transformation to pupz safely effected under ground, and the entomologist 
has full confidence that in due time he will obtain the much desired imago, and, 
when it may be expected, watches hourly for its emergence, and is rewarded by 
the appearance of an Ophion or a swarm of Tachina flies, or of some still 
smaller enemy, whose existence he did not even suspect. 
Again, the collector may be obliged to delegate his cares temporarily to 
another, who, unused to the almost constant supervision necessary, suffers the 
precious larva to starve, or, by an oversight, tosses it out with the withered 
leaves, or crushes it in the hinges of the door, or, still more aggravating, thought- 
lessly raises the cover and allows some long looked for imagine to dart out and 
escape through an open window. All that he will remember for the benefit of 
the person chiefly concerned, will be that it was a moth and “seemed something 
peculiar.” As the entomologist cannot afford a separate cage for each species, 
and as he had probably put his choice unknown in with some well known forms 
of which he wishes simply to increase his duplicates, he probably grasps at the 
hope that the escaped insect was one of the latter, and so defers the full realiza- 
tion of his loss until weeks and months have passed and all his expected species 
have emerged, and then he hopes for better success another year, and finds “ life 
well worth living” for this and similar reasons, which only an ardent naturalist 
can appreciate. 
In some respects too much care is as subversive of success as too little. For 
instance, the very natural curiosity which the student feels to examine into the 
state of the insect after it has been buried for a short time in the earth. So he 
sifts the soil in his cage; and though he handles it with all caution, the frail 
earthen cell in which the treasure is enclosed falls in pieces, and the poor cater- 
pillar in complete helplessness squirms in the loosened earth. Despairingly he 
tries with clumsy fingers to re-inclose it in the fragments of its cell, or attempts 
to form a substitute by packing the earth so that it may not be smothered. In 
vain. In ninety-nine cases in a hundred he never sees the imago. 
While the hardy pupz of most noctuids will bear any amount of handling, 
and by their activity will beat hard the earth about them at any time, a few 
