A METHOD OF ILLUSTRATING INSECT WINGS 



By Charles S. Banks 



Of the Bureau of Science, Manila 



In the preparaton of articles dealing with insect taxonomy, 

 the delineation of insect wings often becomes a serious problem 

 to the entomologist who lacks skill in draftsmanship or does not 

 have available the services of a trained artist. This becomes 

 a decided handicap or a real menace to accuracy in certain 

 orders and families where venation is complicated and where so 

 much depends, especially in generic characterizations, upon 

 minute differences in size or direction of certain veins. 



While inked camera lucida tracings are very satisfactory for 

 those wings small enough to come within the field of the micro- 

 scope, their preparation imposes to too great an extent upon the 

 patience and steadiness of the one making them. In the case 

 of larger wings, the shifting of the specimen and the making 

 of tracings in sections to be united afterwards not only cost 

 time and much labor but also are not infrequently causes of 

 grave errors not at the time perceived by the worker. 



Recourse may be had, in many cases, to photography in its 

 ordinary phases and this, supplemented by photomicrography, 

 naturally gives the most-accurate and pleasing results. 



It was in casting about for a simplification of the photographic 

 process that it occurred to me to try another method of repro- 

 duction, one which has been used with effect for other objects. 

 This was to make a contact negative of the specimen the repro- 

 duction of which was desired, and from this negative to make 

 a series of bromide enlargements of any convenient size. 



The process by which these reproductions are made requires 

 first that the wing be removed from the insect. It is then laid 

 out, with others which it is desired to reproduce, upon a piece 

 of glass, 12.5 by 20 centimeters (5 by 8 inches), preferably a 

 flawless photographic plate from which the negative emulsion 

 has been removed. After being properly arranged the wing 

 base is touched with a drop of thick white shellac which, when it 



