PREFACE. Xlll 



like a safe investment of money, the interest being paid in the pleasure and 

 profit the owner receives from studying the contents. 



As soon as the cabinet is quite ready to receive the Butterflies, you must 

 cnt up a copy of Doubleday's " List of British Butterflies and Moths " very neatly 

 with a pair of scissors, thus making a quantity of little labels. You will observe 

 that every insect has two names, as Argynnis Paphia: the first name must be 

 pinned above the insect, the second below, thus : 



ARGYNNIS. 



(The Butterfly comes in this space.) 

 PAPHIA. 



Then follows the next Butterfly, with its scientific name above and below, then 

 the next, and so on until the row is complete. One drawer will accommodate 

 six or seven rows of Butterflies. It is a very common plan with entomologists 

 to rule on the paper straight lines, either in pencil or ink, between the rows ; 

 the idea is that they serve as guides to the eye in keeping the rows perfectly 

 parallel ; but a collection, as the number of insects increases, has to be re-arranged 

 every few years, and then these lines have to be rubbed out, or obliterated in 

 some way perhaps by papering the drawers anew. This, I found, caused a great 

 deal of unnecessary trouble, and therefore I have entirely abandoned the plan, 

 and now manage to dispense with lines altogether. 



Even after all your insects are arranged in the neatest manner, and you fancy 

 that everything is going on well, you will often find that you have included in your 

 carefully-glazed drawers insects that you had no desire whatever to preserve. Their 

 presence will be indicated by coarse dust beneath your choicest specimens, and 

 you will often see holes made in the wings, and all manner of disfigurement 

 and damage. The enemies are of three kinds the caterpillar of a beetle called 

 Atfagenus Pellio; the caterpillar of the clothes-moth, Tinea pseudo-spretella ; and a 

 nimble little fellow, called Atropos pulsatorius. Their united depredations would 

 very speedily reduce your collection to a mass of dust and fragments ; but never let 

 the mischief come to such a pass as that. Directly you observe any dust, however 

 little, underneath an insect, take off the glass, and take out the infected individual ; 

 as soon as he is removed from the drawer, drop benzole on his back, drop after drop, 

 until he is thoroughly saturated, and all his wings are rendered perfectly transparent. 

 In this state remove him to the drying cage, and there let him remain until all the 

 benzole has evaporated, and his colours have returned, bright and beautiful as ever. 

 You may be sure the creatures that were devouring him are all dead, and you have 

 nothing further to fear from them. My own drawers are looked at so frequently, 

 and the benzole is applied so continually, that marauders of this kind never 



