THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 18] 
from India with perfect success. For one large specimen | 
had to take the largest saucepan our small kitchen afforded, 
and by placing a piece of wood and cork across the middle, 
and filling the bottom with water, gave him a gentle vapour- 
bath, which relaxed him in five or six hours; and the speci- 
men was perfectly dry on the setting-board in three days. 
Any plan which for five or six hours keeps the specimens in 
a gentle warm vapour will relax more speedily and dry more 
quickly than any other plan I have tried, and | do not find it 
affect either colour or plumage. For killing moths of all kinds 
J invariably use cyanide (poison) bottles of different sizes, filled 
very lightly with cotton-wool, which is placed in the bottles in 
small pieces, so that the contents may be carefully drawn out 
piece by piece. The moths bury themselves in the cotton- 
wool, and may be carried without shaking. Some, | know, 
have found this plan fail, and that small moths are rubbed. 
Much of this damage is caused in taking the cotton-wool 
out, if not placed in the bottles in small detached pieces. 
With all care some may possibly be damaged slightly. By 
what other plan can we ensure invariable success? Then L 
shall be answered: The process stiffens the specimens, and 
you cannot afterwards set them. I grant that it does, for 
twelve, and even twenty-four hours afterwards; but leave 
them in the bottle twenty-four hours and every specimen 
will be perfectly pliant, for the rigor mortlis has ceased. I 
found this out by leaving some specimens by accident in a 
bottle for more than a week, and they set beautifully. When 
out for several days I pack all my small moths in layers 
between cotton-wool in one of my poison bottles (I drop one 
or two drops of water on the bottom and damp the cork), and 
can set them all with perfect ease at the end of a week: in 
fact, you might leave them three weeks without damage ; and 
I find them travel admirably in this manner. I now never 
touch a moth with my fingers, except to insert the pin for 
setting; and the amount of midnight labour spared after a 
hard day’s hunting on the mountains is a relief not to be 
despised. Can any of your correspondents give a hint as to 
the best means of handling the antenne in setting? 1 mean 
the antenne of Noctua, Geometra, &c.; | cannot keep them 
straight on the setting-boards, do what I will. I have tried 
pins; small pieces of paper over them; but no plan satisfies 
