662 



Collecting and Rearing Insects 



When brought home the live specimens must be transferred to "cages" 

 or rearing-boxes or jars in which proper food is kept and which enables 

 the insect to live as nearly as possible in its normal way. We want our 

 caterpillars not merely to provide us with fine "unrubbed" fresh moths and 

 butterflies for our collection, but want them to go through under our eyes 

 their usual life-history: we wish to see them eat and crawl and moult 

 and spin and transform. We wish to get acquainted with the details of 

 their living; to watch them grow and develop; and to see them display 



FIG. 807. Breeding-cage. (After Packard.) 



their instincts and insect wits. We may go so far in our scientific curiosity 

 as to be led to experimenting with them: to note how they react or behave 

 toward light and darkness, toward moisture or dryness, heat or cold; to 

 see if they may be induced to modify their inherited instincts to the extent 

 of doing new and unusual things, or old things in new ways; to see if their 

 life is pure mechanism or in a simpler and more generalized way something 

 like ours, in which consciousness and memory and choice play so important 

 a part. 



Particularly available and interesting kinds of insects to rear in home 

 cages and aquaria are the larvae (caterpillars) of moths and butterflies, various 

 leaf-eating, wood-boring, and ground-burrowing beetle larvae, honey-bees 



