the cyanide bottle by the thousand specimens, and then spread all at once. This 

 of course incurs the necessity of relaxing specimens and consequently the diffi- 

 culty is not experienced." 



On page 71 in the fourth line of the article by E. J. Smith "Taking Insects 

 from Net," the word "hole" is a typographical error. The word should have 

 been "fold." 



HUNTING LARWE OF LEPIDOPTERS. 

 (R. R. Rowley, Superintendent of Schools, Louisiana, Mo.) 



Like all other boys I studied insects in my youth, but in a desultory, de- 

 structive way, it is true. Like a Mexican Constitutionalist I was always on 

 the firing line when a bumble bee's nest was to be attacked or a hornet's home 

 to be bombarded and unlike a true "bushwhacker," often got in the line of the 

 enemy's fire and had to be carried to the rear for repairs. It was only after I 

 got into high school and took up the subject of zoology that my study of 

 entomology began to assume some definite shape. Of course my drill was fast 

 making a trained soldier out of me and like a modern warrior who fights from 

 behind cover if he can find the cover, I went forth again in quest of the enemy, 

 armed with a net and chloroform bottle. There was the most fun running pell- 

 mell after a faded old Cybele or Monarch, striking wildly at the dodging insect 

 only to take a battered, stringy, irrecognizable object fit only for the "rag bag." 



After the skirmish line was driven in and the real siege began of course 

 tact and caution took the place of dash and the prisoners when taken were less 

 "shot up." 



The first cocoon I ever saw to know what it was had been found by a 

 fellow pupil but could not be bought at any price. It was a Cecropia cocoon, 

 and I offered all the change I had for it. Right there began my wanderings in 

 the woods and I've been a wanderer ever since. The coveted cocoon had been 

 found on a sassafras bush and I stuck to the sassafras till I "landed" a prize. 

 After nursing that cocoon all winter and jealously guarding it till the north wind 

 had "ceased to howl," lo! one day it yielded a wasp-like insect to my utter 

 disgust and my vision of dusky wings "had melted into viewless air." That 

 summer I began my first searches for larvae, big larvae, and the first one I found 

 was of Polyphemus, feeding on the leaves of an oak bush. It is likely I saw 

 smaller "crawlers" but I passed them by with disdain. I was searching for 

 bigger game. The finding of that Polyphemus larva was the second milestone 

 on the road of my wanderings and, by the way, I've been hunting for caterpillars 

 ever since. 



All of my first study of insects was done without books or instructors. I 

 was a close observer. I found that larvae ate the green portions of the leaves and 

 left the foot stalk, standing out twig-like. I also observed that the waste food 

 of the caterpillar left the body as peculiarly grooved pellets and collected on the 

 ground beneath where the larva was feeding. I didn't need much other instruc- 

 tion except the names of the foodplants of the insects I wanted. 



Some of the foodplants of butterflies I learned from the butterflies them- 

 selves, as I related under "Hunting the Eggs of Lepidopters" in No. 5 of the 

 "Butterfly Farmer." One handicap to my success as a caterpillar hunter of 

 "rare attainments" has been my sight, a little short I think, though, the most 

 pleasurable events of the chase, if searching for larvae could be dignified by such 

 a word as chase, were my first finding of larvae of Mrs. Stratton-Porter's "Yellow 



104 



