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stands as shown.^ This, of course, is buried under the earth 

 in the pan, and is not removed. By having two or three 

 bottles when shifting food, one is got ready, and the other 

 removed, when the larvae can be at once replaced in a cage. 

 Avoid fingering the larvae if possible. I generally use a 

 pair of scissors to cut off the piece of twig, rather than 

 pull them off, as some species hold on most tenaciously. 

 It is a good plan to cover the earth with a layer of dry 

 sphagnum or bog-moss. It serves a twofold purpose : it 

 enables the larvae to hide away in the day time, as many 

 Noctuai larvae especially do, and it also allows the frass to 

 be shaken away without disturbing the soil. 



This bee-glass feeding cage, used in one or the other 

 fashion, is in my experience the most generally useful cage 

 that can possibly be employed. I may safely say that in 

 such I have bred thousands of Lepidoptera, such species as 

 Asteroscopus mibeculosa, Endromis versicolor, A crony eta alni, 

 A . strigosa ; the last two especially require rotten wood to 

 pupate, Tceniocampa popiileti, T. opima, and Xylina furcifera 

 (Mr. Evan John kindly gave me twenty ova of the last, and in 

 my bee-glass and pan I bred twenty splendid moths). 

 Possibly I ought to caution you to be careful that the zinc 

 ring goes to the bottom of the pan, or else some larvae, such as 

 Nyssia Jiispidaria, which require a good depth of soil, and are 

 prone to be restless on touching the bottom of the shallow 

 earthen pan, will ramble, and very possibly come up again 

 outside the zinc, and escape. This did occur to me with one 

 of my earliest broods of liispidaria, and I lost every one of 

 them so. I made a note of it. 



For breeding hairy larvae I find that more air is necessary 

 as a rule ; very many of them absolutely require sunshine, 

 but it is never safe to expose larvae to the sun's rays in glass 

 or hardly with metal cages. The stored heat kills them. For 

 hairy larvae, open canvas cages answer best, as they allow 

 free passage of air, and may be exposed to the sun, as they 

 do not store up heat. My best results with such larvae as 



^ A flat circular disc of zinc, say 5 inches in diameter, has an upright cylinder 

 of zinc soldered on, in which a 2 or 3 oz. wide mouth round bottle will just 

 slide in and out ; this bottle holds the stems of food-plant, and can be readily 

 ■changed. 



