444 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [Dec. , '07 



I disinfect every bit of material that is sent to me before 

 mounting it and placing it in the collection. The method I 

 use for this purpose is not my own, and was recommended by 

 Riley. I place the material in an air-tight box (a well-made 

 Smith-box will do), in the middle of which I place a glass or 

 porcelain cup (such a one that is used for holding microscopi- 

 cal preparations, about one to two inches in diameter and one 

 inch high will do), fill it partly with bisulphide of carbon and 

 allow the material to stay in closed box for twenty-four hours. 

 Do not operate with the bisulphide near an open light as it is 

 very explosive. After this treatment I mount the material 

 and put the insects in the collection boxes. In each of these 

 boxes I place a common thimble, to the base of which I have 

 soldered a short and strong pin, so as to stick the thimble in a 

 corner of the box. I fill this little receptacle loosely with 

 medicated cotton (entfettete Watte) and then pour in coal tar 

 creosote so that the cotton is perfectly soaked with the drug. 

 The thimbles have to be refilled about every six or twelve 

 months. I generally use for filling them up a common glass 

 dropper which can be had in any drug store, two for five cents. 

 I have made experiments with this creosote by placing common 

 cigar boxes filled with coleoptera on the table in an exposed 

 room, the boxes being partly open because the covers do not 

 close air-tight at all, and allow all kind of small insects to en- 

 ter. I simply allowed half a teaspoonful of creosote running 

 over the cork covering the bottom of the boxes, and kept them 

 in that way absolutely free from any pest, while other boxes 

 full of insects, but not treated with the drug, showed in a 

 short time the ravages of different coleopterous enemies. I 

 even found one box, having been treated three years previously 

 with creosote, entirely free from any pest. In this method we 

 surely find simplicity, inexpensiveness, with absolute safety 

 for the collection combined. 



Prof. J. H. Comstock, of Cornell University and President of the 

 Entomological Society of America, Sails for Italy this month, and will in 

 addition probably make a trip up the Nile. He has been given a sabbat- 

 ical leave of absence by the University. 



