sieve as a cook will in sifting flour, you can 
readily dislodge any small beetle that may ad- 
here. I believe this sieve with the umbrella, 
sweep net and small light net to be indispenable 
to practical collecting, and I urge the liberal use 
of both sweep or beating net and sieve. 
During the winter months you can arrange and 
label your collection, and if you have kept a note 
book, which you should always do, youcan make 
an index or synopsis of your notes of appearances 
and characteristics of the insects found, and if 
you have these notes under dates properly kept, 
they will be of great value to you in after years. 
If you have handled your insects carefully and 
. Classified them, you will find no difficulty in ex- 
changing your duplicates for species new to you. 
Beetles common in New England may be rare 
in Illinois, and species common there may be 
rare with you. By exchanging you can add valu- 
able species and at the same time increase your 
knowledge of the distribution of the insect fauna 
of our country. 
It is preferable for a collector to devote his 
time to one order, unless he is a professional stu- 
dent, for if you wish to make the study of ento- 
mology a pleasant auxiliary to business cares, 
and wish to gain both pleasant knowledge and 
delightful recreation, you will receive more satis- 
faction from one order diligently collected than 
from a more extensive collection. A. collection 
gains in interest as it increases, and as the more 
common species are secured you must rely more 
and more on rare forms or species from other 
localities, and a constant acquisition of rare and 
interesting beetles will be a source of constant 
delight ; yet it is well, perhaps, to keep any inter- 
esting butterflies or other insects you may find, 
and exchange them when you have a chance, for 
beetles. 
You will find ample material for study and 
work in any one single order of American insects, 
and unless your time and means are unlimited 
you will find it a life’s work to nearly complete 
your order. 
One of the greatest difficulties in the path of 
the amateur will be to properly classify his col- 
lections. Only a few species of the Coleoptera 
can be readily named from popular books, and it 
is a difficult matter to form a good working 
library, owing to the majority of the descriptions 
of Coleopterous insects being published in vari- 
ous transactions and other publications of socie- 
ties ; but with the help of more experienced ento- 
mologists, who are ever ready to give valuable 
aid, and with the books easily procured, the stu- 
dent will be able to gain much knowledge, 
and as time goes on and he becomes better ac- 
AND OOLOGIST. Vek 
quainted with his collection, he will be surprised 
to find what now seems an almost impossibility, 
becoming an easy and interesting study. 

Sphinx Ligustri. 

PAUL REVERE. 
Several years ago I received from the west a 
dozen eggs of the English Hawk Moth, (Sphinw 
ligustri) with instructions to feed the larvee upon 
the foliage of the sweet potato vine. I might as 
well have been advised to feed them upon the 
foliage of the palmetto tree, for one is just as 
plenty as the other in this latitude. A substitute 
must be found, and I turned instinctively to the 
lilac, because the leaves of this shrub resemble 
those of the sweet potato. The larvze made their 
exit from the egg in the night time, and unfa- 
miliarity with this habit was the cause of my 
losing several before I discovered them. To my 
surprise they took readily to this substituted food, 
fed ravenously and manifested great steadiness in 
their purpose to subsist and reproduce their kind. 
They showed little nervousness or disposition to 
roam, and their adherence to their food made 
them very little care. 
The rapidity of their growth and marked pros- 
perity, led me to suspect that lilac was a pre- 
ferred food, and after consulting several entomo- 
logical works I found that Figuier, in his “ Insect 
World,” gave lilac as a natural food for the 
larvee. 
These eggs were received on June 27th and 
hatched on June 30th. The larvee were light 
apple-green in color, about one-third of an inch 
in length, with a black caudal horn one-twelfth 
ofan inch in‘ length. They rested near the mid- 
rib of the leaf during the day and fed in the night. 
They grew rapidly, passing their first moult on 
the fourth day. On the 8th day of July they 
cast their skins and showed clearly the dark 
oblique line at the sides. On the 20th of July 
they were three inches in length, had passed the 
third moult, and were assuming the pinkish hue 
which indicates their maturity and the near ap- 
proach of the burrowing season. On the 28th of 
July all the larvee had gone into the earth and 
they remained there until the 7th of the follow- 
ing June, a period of ten and one-half months. 
I mated a pair the following season and had an 
hundred eggs. I had no trouble in feeding them, 
and they grew with a small per cent. of loss by 
death. After they had reached the second moult 
they disappeared in a night. I was at a loss to 
know what became of them. As they were kept 
in a close attic room, I searched the place thor- 
oughly without finding a trace of them, after 
