A Scientific Slaughterer 41 



a single speck, that fine tinted bloom which 

 is destroyed by the mere contact of our fingers. 

 If the insect were dead, if it were really a 

 corpse, how great would be our difficulty in 

 obtaining a like result ! Each of us can kill 

 an insect by brutally crushing it under foot ; 

 but to kill it neatly, with no sign of injury, is not 

 an easy operation, is not an operation which 

 any one can perform. How many would be 

 utterly perplexed if they were called upon to 

 kill, then and there, without crushing it, a 

 hardy little insect which, even when you cut 

 off its head, goes on struggling for a long time 

 after ! One has to be a practical entomologist 

 to think of the various ways of asphyxiation ; 

 and even here success would be doubtful with 

 primitive methods, such as the fumes of benzine 

 or burning sulphur. In this unwholesome at- 

 mosphere the insect flounders about too long 

 and loses its glory. We must have recourse to 

 more heroic measures, such as the terrible 

 exhalations of prussic acid emanating slowly 

 from strips of paper steeped in cyanide of 

 potassium, or else and better still, as being free 

 from danger to the insect-hunter, the all- 

 powerful fumes of bisulphide of carbon. It is 

 quite an art, you see — and an art which has to 

 call to its aid the formidable arsenal of chemistry 

 — to kill an insect neatly, to do what the 



