XXXII INTRODUCTION. 



specimens should never be glued to card points, as is com- 

 monly done with coleoptera ; they should always be pinned. 

 Sometimes specimens may be collected and packed in some 

 very fine, light sawdust, impregnated with carbolic acid, where 

 it is inconvenient or impossible to pin them. Such specimens 

 being gently separated from the sawdust are allowed to re- 

 main for some hours, over, but not touching, damp sand before 

 pinning. To pin the small specimens, use narrow strips of good 

 card-board or bristol-board, thrusting a slender pin through one 

 end and allowing it to protrude just a little above the edge and 

 clipping off the longer end with a pair of pliers. Thrust the 

 point of the pin as held in the card-board, into the under side 

 of the insect, but not entirely through it, and a stronger pin 

 in the reverse direction through the other end of the small 

 strip. The pins are to be thrust through the card-board from 

 edge to edge, and in consequence a good quality is to be se- 

 lected that will not split too readily. The wings should never 

 be spread, but should be turned aside so as not to conceal the 

 abdomen. In the early part of the season many interesting 

 species will be caught with the beating-net. The pointed end 

 of the beating-net may be thrust, with its contents, into a 

 bottle containing a little chloroform, or into a cyanide bottle, 

 for a short time, when the specimens may be leisurely re- 

 moved. Later in the season, flower-flies will be collected from 

 a great variety of melliferous blossoms, and it is better to 

 wait for the specimens to come to such blossoms than to go 

 hastily about looking for them. I have collected from a sin- 

 gle patch of elderberry blossoms, not a rod in diameter, more 

 than forty species of Syrphidse within ten days. Not many 

 species are to be found in shady woods, but those species must 

 be sought for there. To preserve flies in the cabinet from 

 their insect enemies, I use naphthaline. The head of ordinary 

 pins, when heated red-hot, may be thrust into the common 

 moth-balls sold by the druggists, which when thus mounted 

 serve all purposes. 



