REARING AND COLLECTING ANIMALS 



477 



"Soft specimens" such as insect larvae, myriapods, and 

 spiders, should be preserved in bottles of alcohol (85 per 

 cent) . Nests, galls, stems, and leaves partly eaten by insects, 

 and other dry specimens can be kept in small pasteboard 

 boxes. 



Birds. — In collecting birds, 

 shooting is chiefly to be relied 

 on. Use dust-shot (the small- 

 est shot made) in small loads. 

 For shooting small birds it is 

 extremely desirable to have an 

 auxiliary barrel of much small- 

 er bore than the usual shotgun 

 which can be fitted into one 

 of the regular gun-barrels. In 

 such an auxiliary barrel use 

 32-calibre shells loaded with 

 dust-shot instead of bullets. 

 Plug up the throat and vent 

 of shot birds with cotton, and 

 thrust each bird head down- 

 ward into a cornucopia of pa- 

 per. This will keep the 

 feathers unsoiled and smooth. 



Birds should be skinned 

 soon after bringing home, 

 after they have become relax- 

 ed, but before evidences of 

 decomposition are manifest. 

 The tools and materials nec- 

 essary to make skins are scal- 

 pel, strong sharp-pointed scis- 

 sors, bone-cutters, forceps, 

 corn-meal, a mixture of two 

 parts white arsenic and one 

 part powdered alum, cotton, 

 Before skinning, the bird 



Fig. 243. Setting-board with but- 

 terflies properly "spread". (After 

 Comstock.) 



and metric-system measure, 

 should be measured. With a 

 metric-system measure carefully take the alar extent, i. e,, 



