128 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [7:5— May, 1911 



the case to make changes or repairs. The wooden strips are still 

 furnished by A. I. Root, Medina, Ohio, dealer in bee supplies, for 

 approximately a tenth of a cent each in quantities. In addition 

 to the rather refined methods of gluing the insects, suggested by 

 Professor Hodge, specimens that are bought with pins already in 

 them may be mounted. After sticking the pins into bits of cork 

 they may be glued to the glass ; then the pins may be cut off to 

 suit the thickness of the case. Pins will not be particularly ob- 

 jectionable in specimens meant only for normal school students, 

 except as they may imitate the same method. Pins holding larvae 

 or small insects may be stuck directly into the wooden sides. 



Normal and high school teachers often feel keenly the lack of 

 working material on life-histories. A plan that does well for 

 table distribution, that can be used over and over and that requires 

 a minimum of time to prepare, is to place specimens of all avail- 

 able stages of an insect in as small a bottle or homeopathic vial 

 as will accommodate them; e. g., a young and adult squash bug, 

 two or three stages of locust, a cicada and cast, June and potato 

 beetles and their larvae, duplicates of various caterpillars. The 

 fly life-history may be put in either of the following ways : an 

 insect pin piercing a pupa, an empty puparium, and an adult may 

 be stuck in the cork before it is inserted into the empty bottle ; or 

 these may be placed, together with a maggot, in preservative. A 

 series of these life-history bottles may be placed in a tray for 

 each one or two pupils and be used comparatively. Some stages, 

 as dragonfly nymphs, may be more easily bought than collected. 

 Incidental advantages of the method just described are, that the 

 filled bottle itself acts as a magnifier ; a hand lens may readily be 

 used ; the specimens do not have to be sorted out and replaced in 

 stock bottles with the consequent wear and tear ; they are not left 

 on the tables to dry out between recitations of different sections 

 of the class ; and difficulty with supersensitive or mischievous 

 pupils is reduced to a minimum. 



Pasteboard boxes may contain duplicate collections of sev- 

 eral varieties of chrysalids and empty cocoons, or short, two and 

 three-ounce bottles may be used to display the cut-open cocoon 

 and the pupa taken from it. Cocoons ordered from C. S. Brim- 

 ley, Raleigh, S. C, if kept in a breeding cage and frequently 

 observed during April and May, will usually provide a few mag- 

 gots and pupal stages of the fly as well as several large ich- 

 neumons. 



While not exactly belonging to the class of time-saving 



