40 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



I have alluded above to a painless mode of doing so, 

 doubtless applicable to all insects. I know it answers 

 admirably with the large moths, so tenacious of life 

 under other circumstances. This potent agent is chloro- 

 form, whose pain- quelling properties are so well known 

 as regards the human constitution. 



There is a little apparatus 1 constructed for carrying 

 this fluid safely to the field, and letting out a drop at a 

 lime into the box with the captured insect, taking care 

 that the drop does not go on to the insect. Or a wide- 

 mouthed bottle may be used, having at the - bottom a 

 pad of blotting-paper, or some absorbent substance, on 

 which a few drops of chloroform may now and then be 

 dropped. The insect being slipped into this, and the 

 stopper or hand being placed over the bottle's mouth, 

 insensibility (in the insect) follows immediately, and in 

 a few minutes, at most, it is completely lifeless. 



But the usual and quickest mode of despatch is by 

 a quick nip between the finger and thumb applied just 

 finder the wings, causing, for the most part, instantaneous 

 death : and this can be done through the net, when the 

 inclosed butterfly shuts his wings, as he usually does 

 when the net wraps round him. 



Now take one of your thin pins, and pass it through 

 the thorax of the butterfly, while open or shut, and put 

 it into the corked lining of your pocket-box. So secured, 

 the butterfly will travel uninjured till you reach home ; 

 but a heap of dead butterflies in a box together will, in 

 the course of a long walk, so jostle together, as to 

 entirely destroy each other's beauty, rubbing off all 

 their painted scales, when, of course, they are as butter- 

 flies no longer. 



1 A very ingenious and neat contrivance the invention of 

 my friend, Dr. Allchin, of Bayswater. It may be procured from 

 Mrs. Foxcroft, of 3, Union Yard, Oxford Street (near Orchard 

 Street), the widow of an assiduous collector and dealer in in- 

 sects, who, I regret to state, has lately fallen a victim to his 

 entomological labours in the deadly climate of Sierra Leone. 

 Mrs. F. also keeps a stock of excellent entomological apparatus 

 and specimens of all kinds. 



