24: BULLETIN BROOKLYN ENTOM. SOC. VOL. VI. June 1883. | 
Editors Department. 
Cn this department will be brought short notes from all sources, extracts from 
correspondence, hints, queries, criticisms and the like, and any facts of interest that our 
‘Pp Y. 
subseribers or correspondents may send to ws will find a place here. — Editors.) 
Alypia octo maculata. In the small patch of ground allotted my residence 
as a yard is a grape vine, suffering annually from the caterpillars of this moth. Usually 
the moths appear in June and early in July, but this season, a specimen was found 
May Ist another on May 8th and several have been seen in the interval. They are not 
very active and are easily taken. The grape, the food plant of the caterpillar has yet 
(May 12) scarcely a leaf. I never before heard of the moth appearing thus early. 
Check List. We have in preparation a list of additions and corrections to our 
““Check list’? which will bring it to the date of publication of the addenda: will our 
friends please send in a memorandum of all omissions or errors they may have noted in 
the list as we desire to make it entirely complete and accurate. 
p 
Mounting Microscopic beetles and parts dissected during study. The habit of 
many has been afier examining the parts of an insect and making dissections to throw 
away the insect after making notes. Others mount them in balsam on glass slides: 
this latter had been my practice, but slides accumulate and are inconvenient to keep, A 
substitute a knowledge of which I owe to Dr. Horn answers admirably for all purposes 
and is perfectly simple. A hole, round or square is punched or cut out of a piece of 
Bristol board of any desired size, a cover glass (I use the square) is fastened on one 
side over the aperture by a thin circle of shellac ; this forms a shallow cell in which the 
part to be examined is placed, a drop of Canada balsam is put on it and the whole is 
covered by another cover glass, Your preparation thus effectually preserved, and you 
can put a pin through the end of the card and put it in your cabinet next the insect the 
object is intended to illustrate. You can put half a dozen cards ona single pin and 
the space thus occupied is very small while the preparation is as convenient for examin- 
ation as though mounted on a glass slide. 
To keep out Dermestes Mr. Ackhurst states that he has successfully used the 
following proparation ; 3 parts cresote or crude carbolic acid and one part oil of penny 
royal. Apply at the seams, grooves and edges of the boxes or where there is a chance 
for entrance, and neither Dermestes the small paper lice, nor the ants will trouble you, 
Against the two latter pests I have found the carbolic acid alone to be sufficient. 
To wash old dirty specimens there are many ways but the one that seems to us 
the best is the following. 
Place the specimens in a tin-kettle } filled with moist sand, to soften them; 
small species remain therein over night, larger for 24 hours, then wash them with cold 
water, using a small stiff paint-brush, if not sufficiently clean, apply soap; rubbing with 
the brush and then wash them with cold water. On T'row, Lachnosterna and other 
species covered with a layer of mud on the wings the soap is left for a few hours, and 
then washed off with cold water again. 
Greasy specimens are put in benzine but great care has to be taken that they are 
not left to long in this fluid, as they thereby become very brittle. 
