HINTS ON COLLECTING AND PRESERVING HYMUNOPTERA. 113 
of this bottle are that it can be prepared or renewed in a few 
minutes, and that its effectiveness lasts for so long a period. I have 
bottles at present in use that I prepared more than two years ago. 
When the overlying cardboard gets saturated with the cyanide and 
rotten, a fresh piece should be put over it, which ought also to be 
pierced with pin holes. Occasionally, from the jolting a collecting 
bottle gets in the collector’s pocket or wallet, the saw-dust and 
cyanide get loose, and the latter is apt then to injure with its weight 
and the shaking any delicate specimens there may happen to be in 
the bottle ; but with a little care in occasionally pressing down the 
cardboard with the top of a pencil say, such mishaps can well be 
avoided. The reason I have recommended dealwood saw-dust is 
that having once prepared a bottle with teak saw-dust, I was sur- 
prised to find specimens of wasps I had caught and left in the bottle 
for a day or two change colour in a most wonderful manner; yellow 
was the only colour affected, and this changed to a bright crimson,* 
a pleasing esthetic contrast with black no doubt; but the deuce 
and all if the specimen altered in colour happens to be your sole 
example of a rare species. What it was in the teakwood and cyan- 
ide of potassium blending that affected the yellow colours in the 
insects Iam not chemist enough to determine. Dealwood saw~- 
dust seems to be unaffected by the cyanide. 
For capturing Hymenoptera an ordinary butterfly-net will do, 
only the meshes of the mosquito gauze of which it is made should 
be somewhat fine, otherwise diminutive Chryside, Scoliade and 
Matillide: will manage to creep out. 
As soon after capture as possible, the insects if large should be 
pinned into a pith or cork lined store-box, or if very tiny fixed with 
a little pin’s-head drop of clear gum on the apex of a small isosceles 
triangle cut out of thin cardboard (ordinary visiting come in handy 
here), and with a pin passed through the cardboard put into the 
store-box. When the pin is put into the insect itself it should be 
passed through the thorax, and out at the breast between and a little 
behind the front pair of legs. Jn all cases use long pins, so as to 
keep the insects well clear of the floor of the box or cabinet-drawer., 
It is not absolutely necessary but with all, except the smallest insects, 
to facilitate examination, it is better to set out the wings horizon- 
* T can give any brother collector specimens of Pelopeus spirifex and Polistes 
hebreeus, colours brilliant crimson and black—unique, I assure them, 
