50 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS 



leaving home, a teaspoonful of rum should be added, to 

 improve the flavour of the compound. 



When the hunting-ground is reached, the collector, 

 having first ascertained the direction of the wind, will 

 apply the sugar on the opposite or sheltered side of the 

 trees, covering a strip of the surface of the trunk, about 

 the level of his own eye, with the luscious compound. 

 Some few drops of the sugar are sure to trickle down- 

 wards, and the object being to sugar as many trees as 

 possible in a limited time, it does not answer the col- 

 lector's purpose to stop too long at a single tree. Trees 

 at the edge of a roadway, or path through a wood, or 

 on the borders of a heath, are often very productive, 

 and if trees happen to be scarce in the selected hunting- 

 ground, the sides of palings, wooden posts, rocks, and 

 stones may be made use of; the foliage of young fir-trees 

 is also handy for sugaring in default of larger objects. 

 When a sufficient area has thus been covered with the 

 sugar, the collector lights his bulPs-eye lantern, and 

 proceeds to examine critically the sugared stems. 

 Many of the Noctuse which come to the sugar sit there 

 sluggishly, and may be easily boxed ; others are more 

 wary, and sit with their wings half raised, ready for 

 instant flight, so that the collector has to be prepared 

 with his net ; and the Geometridas, which occasionally 

 come to the sugar, are generally very much on the 

 alert. Some few of the smaller tribes of moths may 

 not unfrequently be found also at the sugar, but it is 

 the Noctuina which are the chief votaries, and which 

 come in the greatest numbers. Twenty or thirty on a 

 single tree is no unusual sight, but then the probability 

 would be great of their being nearly all common 

 species. 



