1915] Frost — Remarks on Collecting at Light 207 



REMARKS ON COLLECTING AT LIGHT, WITH A LIST 

 OF THE COLEOPTERA TAKEN. 



By C. a. Frost, 

 Framingham, Mass. 



After I had settled in South Framingham, it was not long before 

 I discovered that I had selected a favorable room for my "bug- 

 den," since moths and other insects soon began to visit me by way 

 of the windows while at work on my collection during the summer 

 evenings. 



The house is so situated that from my room, an attic one on the 

 third floor, one looks out over gardens, yards, and shade trees, 

 toward the west. It was formerly shaded by several European 

 spruces and a large elm, but one of the spruces is almost dead and 

 the elm has been cut down at the recjuest of a "back-to-the-soil" 

 enthusiast whose crop of weeds has probably furnished me with 

 some fine micro-lepidoptera. The afternoon sun beats in the two 

 windows and, in spite of the closed blinds, renders the room unin- 

 habitable to anyone but a "bug-catching crank" long after the 

 sun has set. The insinuations in regard to my mental condition 

 become more emphatic as the summer progresses and the heat 

 drives the rest of the household to the j)iazza, while I insist on 

 retiring to my room for the evening collecting. The heat caused 

 me much trouble with my point mounting so that I discontinued 

 the use of shellac for some time and adopted an English cement 

 which sets very quickly and does not soften. I have since con- 

 cluded that it was a poor quality of shellac which softened with 

 the heat and allowed the insects to drop off or twist about. When 

 I returned from a vacation trip to Colorado after the extremely 

 hot period of July, 1911, to find my new boxes stuck together and 

 a penholder more than half buried in a cake of paraffine on my 

 table — I was mighty glad I went. Dozens of my shellac-mounted 

 specimens have had to be remounted as a result of that summer's 

 heat. 



The town has grown very rapidly since I came here in 1901< and 

 is now an embryo city with houses springing up on every vacant 

 lot, so that I suspect a falling off in the number of specimens that 



