6 APIIORISMATA ENTOMOLOOICA. 



If you '^Jo biisinsss ia a large way^" you will require several of these 

 boxes. 



The next box to be procured, and to be now described, is of much 

 smaller dimensions, being what is commonly called the pocket box. It 

 may be made about six inches long, four wide, and two deep; but on 

 the same principle that you ^^cut your coat according to your cloth," 

 so you can have your box made larger or smaller according to the 

 size of your pocket. Now, let this box be made of tin; and as to the 

 mode of making it, I have to give myself credit for, in the words of 

 my namesake, Miss Edgeworth's Francisco, "a discovery ! a discovery ! 

 which it concerns all" entomologists "to know!" as follows: — • 



Let this box, I say, which is to take out with you when you go 

 collecting, be made of tin, and be of the dimensions just given, or as 

 nearly so as may be most convenient to yourself. Have it made to 

 open as shewn in the plate, not in the middle, as these boxes generally 

 are, but nearer to the top, so as to have only one side, the bottom one, 

 lined with cork, which should be papered or white-washed over, for the 

 reception of recent captures. Inside the lid, have a piece of perforated 

 zinc, which you can obtain at any good ironmonger's shop — fine wire 

 net work would do, but that it is liable to rust, especially under the 

 circumstances about to be narrated. Videlicet; this piece of metallic 

 gauze being fixed on a little hinge or hinges at the inner edge of the 

 lid, is to be made to open out, or shut in, at pleasure. Eetwccn it 

 and the lid, place a flat piece of sponge, and when you are going out 

 collecting, dip the top of the box, thus containing the sponge between 

 the actual lid and the "fly leaf" of zinc, in water. If it should 

 become dry, or rather so, which will naturally bo the case in the hot 

 times of the year, when for the most part you go out collecting, all 

 you have to do is to dip it again in the first stream of water you come 

 to, which will probably not be again required to be done. The efibct 

 is this: instead of your insects, even if ever so small, being dried up 

 by the time you return home, so as to be incapable of being set until 

 you have been at the additional trouble of relaxing them, they are as 

 fresh as at the moment they Avere first captured; and if you have not 

 time to extend them all that night; by again moistening the sponge, and 

 keeping them in this, so made, relaxing box, you ■\vill find them still 

 pliant the following morning. 'Intelligis-ne.'? 



The mention of the small moths brings me to the third kind of box 

 required. This, or rather thcsc^ for you should have two or three, or 



