Collecting and Rearing Insects 



66 3 



and ants, and many still-water insects, as water-beetles and bugs, mosquitoes, 

 May-flies, dragon-flies, etc. For these various kinds of insects with their 

 various kinds of habitat and habit several different kinds of cages are neces- 

 sary. 



For moths and butterfly larva? very simple cages are sufficient. It is 

 only necessary that they admit light and air, that they keep the insects in, 

 and that food, green leaves of the favorite food-plant, may be kept fresh 

 in them, or readily repeatedly supplied. For small, or a few, caterpillars an 

 excellent rearing-cage is shown in Fig. 808. It is made by combining a 

 flower-pot and a lamp-chimney or lantern-globe. When practicable, the 

 food-plant of the insects to be bred is planted in the flower-pot; in other 

 cases a bottle or tin can filled with wet sand is sunk into the soil in the flower- 

 pot, and the stems of the plant are stuck into this wet sand. The top of 

 the lantern-globe is covered with Swiss muslin. These breeding-cages 

 are inexpensive, and especially so when the pots and globes are bought in 

 considerable quantities. 



FIG. 808. 



FIG. 808. Lamp-chimney and floor of breeding-cage. 

 FIG. 809. Bell-jar live -cage. 



FIG. 809. 

 (After Jenkins and Kellogg.) 



In our laboratory we have made much use of bell- jars of the kind with 

 a hole in the top for a cork, which can be closed with netting instead of a 

 cork, so that the air may enter (Fig. 809). Small branches of the food- 

 plant are kept in glass bottles of water, whose mouth is closed around the 

 branches by loose cotton so as to preven't the caterpillars from getting in 

 and drowning. For larger, airier cages in which many caterpillars or trans- 

 forming pupae can be kept we make much use of common wire-screened 



