COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION OF DIPTERA. 63 



specimens, use narrow strips of good card-board or blot- 

 ting paper, thrusting a slender pin through one end and 

 allowing it to protrude just a little above the edge and 

 clipping off the longer end with a pair of pliers. Thrust 

 the point of the pin as held in the card-board, into the 

 under-side of the insect, but not entirely through it, and 

 a stronger pin in the reverse direction through the other 

 end of the small strip. The pins are to be thrust through 

 the card-board from edge to edge, and in consequence a 

 good quality is to be selected that will not split too read- 

 ily. The wings should never be spread, but should be 

 turned aside so as not to conceal the abdomen. In the 

 early part of the season many interesting species will be 

 caught with the beating-net. The pointed end of the 

 beating-net may be thrust, with its contents, into a bot- 

 tle containing a little chloroform, or into a cyanide bot- 

 tle, for a short time, when the specimens may be leisurely 

 removed. Later in the season, flower-flies will be col- 

 lected from a great variety of melliferous blossoms, and 

 it is better to wait for the specimens to come to such blos- 

 soms than to go hastily about looking for them. I have 

 collected from a single patch of elderberry blossoms, not 

 a rod in diameter, more than forty species ot Syrphidae 

 within ten days. Not many species are to be found in 

 shady woods, but those species must be sought for there. 

 To preserve flies in the cabinet from their insect enemies, 

 I use naphthaline. The head of ordinary pins, when 

 heated red-hot, may be thrust into the common moth- 

 balls sold by the druggists, which when thus mounted 

 serve all purposes. 



