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home for food for larvae, select well-developed wood with 

 healthy sound foliage, and not the young and succulent 

 shoots. The matured wood keeps its freshness longer, and as 

 a rule is far the best food ; too succulent a growth is prone to 

 bring on diarrhoea. 



With the growth of the larvae, you must naturally increase 

 the size of the bottles or cages. Always avoid overcrowding. 



It may here be convenient to say a few words on the 

 different styles or methods of feeding up. The close or dry 

 answers well in many cases. By close or dry I mean that the 

 food-plant has not its stems immersed in water, it is only 

 freshly gathered ; and by being in a fairly close bottle or jar, 

 and not exposed to a current of dry air, it keeps fresh and 

 well for nearly a week. An ordinary white jam pot is a simple 

 and convenient receptacle ; first tie over it a piece of 

 nmslin, and then cover it with a piece of ordinary window 

 glass. Some grind the jam-pot edges, and merely cover with 

 glass ; but personally I prefer the first plan, as the little 

 inequalities of surface allow a certain amount of air to pene- 

 trate, but not enough to dry up the food. Wide-mouth sweet 

 bottles are useful. I have used them up to the capacity of a 

 gallon. I am much in favour of this dry feeding for small 

 geometers, etc. By this process I have succeeded in breeding 

 very many species. 



A clean and dry flower-pot, substituted for the white jam- 

 pot, also answers well. I may say that in one I last year 

 bred a long series of Tcsniocampa leucographa on Plantago 

 lanceolata, without a single death, and the larvae were evi- 

 dently happy and fed up well ; nothing could possibly have 

 done better. 



Perhaps the very best cage that I have ever seen or used is 

 what is known as a bee-glass,^ lO or 12 inches in diameter. 

 These may be used in two ways as follows : — The glass can 

 be comfortably filled with food, the stems passing through the 

 hole at bottom, and the whole allowed to stand resting on a 

 jam-pot containing water. Caution : Always well stop the 

 hole with cotton wool, or other convenient substance, to pre- 



^ What is called a bee-glass is the ordinary form of horticultural glass of a bell 

 shape ; but instead of the round button-like knob at bottom being solid, it has a 

 hole quite through it. 



