THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 295 
liking for sugar; and of this year’s captures I will now proceed 
to speak. 
I may premise that 1 brush my sugar—made into syrup 
with beer, and flavoured with rum—at about sunset on two 
espalier apple-trees, standing some few yards apart. I brush 
it in one continuous streak, from about five feet high to 
| within a foot or two of the ground: from this some thin lines 
of the syrup will run, on which many moths will settle in 
preference. I have read much of favourable nights,—calm, 
dark, warm, moist; I cannot say that I have found any kind 
. of night peculiarly favourable or otherwise. My most 
; successful night of the later part of this season was on the 
16th of October, when the moon, nearly full, was shining 
brightly; the wind north-east, and a good deal of it; the 
thermometer lower than usual (it fell to 33° that night): and 
yet I took eight or nine species, including three X. semi- 
brunnea, and C. exoleta and A. aprilina. 
I began to sugar early in August, and took my last moth 
November 3rd. At the commencement I did not possess one 
of those useful oval zinc boxes which I subsequently procured, 
but only a cyanide bottle, yet with this I missed very few. I 
took in it three C. nupta, though how so large a moth got in 
without injury is a mystery. ‘The last month I have used the 
oval box, with bruised laurel-leaves, adding to them a little 
chloroform just before using, as I find the moth drops in 
more readily on account of the vapour, and is almost instantly 
rendered quiet, if not insensible, so that the box is ready for 
another capture. I have taken eight or ten insects at one 
visit quite rapidly ; and if a small piece of leno be put into 
the box, the moths catch their feet in its meshes, and do not 
injure each other. To prevent the stiffness consequent upon 
death by chloroform, I put the captures I wish to retain, after 
examination, into a relaxing box, ¢.e. a mustard-tin, contain- 
ing bruised laurel-leaves covered with leno, and give the 
rejected ones a chance for their lives by placing them on the 
grass, and I find that they nearly all recover. Whether their 
narrow escape renders them teetotallers for ever after, I have 
mot ascertained. I fear not, unless they are much more 
_ Virtuous than the genus homo. 
_ The species I have taken in the three months on the two 
trees are as follows :— 
“T. batis, one; B. glandifera and B. perla, common; 
