BULLETIN 39, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



[26] 



mouths and eat nothing; their term of life is also very limited, not 



exceeding 2-4 days. 

 Suborder Thysanura [dbiravoi;^ tassel; obpd^ tail). This suborder 



comprises minute, degraded insects commonly known as Spring-tails, 

 Bristle-tails, Fish-moths, Snow-fleas, etc. They 

 occur in damp situations and also infest books, 

 wall-paper, etc., eating the starch paste in the 

 book-bindings, or beneath the wall paper. They 

 comjDrise very primitive forms and are inter- 

 esting because they are supposed to represent 

 the original stock from which the higher orders 

 of insects have sx)rung. They are wingless, 

 usually with simple eyes, and clothed with 

 scales, and undergo no metamorphosis. Some 

 of them, as the Fish-moth [Lepisma sp.), run 

 very rapidly and are furnished at the end of 

 the body with a number of long bristles. In 

 other forms these anal bristles or stylets are 



united at the base and bent under the body and become a powerful 



jumping organ, giving them the very appropriate name of Si^ring-tails. 



!FlG. 43 {Lepisma 4-seriata) 



(After Packard.) 



COLLECTING. 



General Considerations. — ''Few departments of natural history 

 ■offer greater inducements or facilities to the student than Entomology. 

 He need not pass his threshold for material, for it may be found on every 

 hand and at all seasons. The directions for collecting, preserving, and 

 studying insects might be extended indefinitely in detail, as volumes 

 have already been written on the subject; but the more general and 

 important instructions are soon given. 



"Beginners are very apt to supply themselves with all sorts of appli- 

 ances advertised by natural history furnishing stores. Many of these 

 appliances, when it comes to real, practical field-work, are soon aban- 

 doned as useless incumbrances; and the greater the exjDerience, the 

 simpler will be the paraphernalia. My own equipment, on a collecting 

 trip, consists chiefly of a cotton umbrella, a strong and narrow steel 

 trowel or digger, a haversack slung across the shoulders, a cigar box 

 lined with sheet cork, and a small knapsack attached to a waistbelt 

 which girts a coat, not of many colors, but of many pockets, so made that 

 in stooping nothing falls out of them. The umbrella is one of the indis- 

 pensables. It shields, when necessary, from old Sol's scorching rays and 

 from the pelting, drenching storm; brings within reach, by its hooked 

 handle, many a larva-freighted bough which would otherwise remain un- 

 disturbed ; and forms an excellent receptacle for all insects that may be 

 dislodged from bush or branch. Opened and held inverted under a bough 

 with the left hand, while the right manipulates a beating-stick, cut for 

 the occasion, it will be the recipient of many a choice specimen that would 



