FOOT ON ENTOMOLOGY. 63 



of the water-net is quite spoiled by heavy rain, which collects in pools 

 on it, and makes it just as uncomfortable to the knees as the wet ground 

 itself. The indiarubber cloth, so useful to coleopterists, may then be 

 dispensed with if working in actual rain. The water-net used 

 was one made by myself out of stout sampler canvas, stitched on a 

 hoop, a foot in diameter, of stout galvanized iron wire ; the net was 

 lashed to the end of two joints of a salmon rod. I took up various 

 species of newt — the great water newt {Triton cristatus), the smooth 

 newt (Lissotriton punctatus), and the palmated smooth newt (Lissotriton 

 palmatus). The newts were thrown back into the drains ; the larger 

 species of the water beetles — species of Dytiscus, Acilius, and many of 

 Ilybius, were put into a half-pound tobacco canister, partly filled with 

 crushed laurel leaves, but having at the bottom three or four broken 

 slabs of cyanide of potassium loosely wrapped in blotting paper, which 

 retains the moisture of the cyanide as it liquefies, and helps efficiently to 

 make the confined atmosphere of the canister very deadly; but, notwith- 

 standing, the raps of the beetles as they spring about can be heard for 

 some time against the top and sides of their tin prison. The smaller 

 water-beetles and smaller water-bugs were put into a wide-mouthed 

 bottle of convenient size, nearly filled with methylated spirits of wine. 

 This answers for killing and carrying safely all the smaller beetles. 

 They are easily set at any time when taken out of the spirit, and do 

 not run the risk of being mutilated by their stronger fellows, as they 

 would in the tin canister. The only drawback that I know of is that 

 the legs of insects thus preserved may prove more brittle than 

 usual when set. I noticed that the aquatic coleoptera always 

 died much more slowly in the spirit-bottle than the terrestrial beetles; 

 perhaps from their being so much better accustomed to a liquid medium 

 the shock of immersion was not so overpowering, and their respiration 

 is less suddenly and less violently interfered with. The spirit-bottle 

 will answer well for killing and keeping spiders, small ichneumons, 

 and some flies — in fact those Hyrnenoptera and Diptera which have no 

 considerable amount of pubescence. If there is much hairiness on any 

 insect immersed in spirit, no amount of dressing will subsequently 

 restore the natural lie of the down, and they can always be recognized 

 as a drowned insect. Many Coleoptera, especially species of Philonthus, 

 and many of the Chrysomelida and Coccinellidoe expand their wings 

 when immersed in the spirit bottle. When this occurrence is objection- 

 able, as many think it spoils the appearance of the insects, the wings 

 can be easily pulled off by a smart jerk with a broad forceps when 

 setting, and the elytra being put back in their places the absence of 

 the membranous wings is not discoverable. 



In the course of the day Cidaria psitticaria (the red-green carpet) 

 was found in an orchard, dodging about among the apple trunks in a 

 drizzling rain; it threw itself down on the ground when escape seemed 

 hopeless, and gave up without any show of resistance. As the impreg- 

 nated female of this moth hybernates, and the apple is a favorite food- plant 

 of its larva, it is likely that the insect was engaged in laying. Dromius 



