PRESERVATION OF CATERPILLARS BY INFLATION. ' S25 
flation, the parts about the head should be the last to dry and 
should be kept over the flame until a rather forcible touch will not 
cause it to bend. 
To secure the best results it is essential that the oven should not 
be too hot, the flame should not be more than an inch high and its — 
tip should be one or two inches from the bottom of the oven. 
When the skin of the caterpillar will yield at no point, it is ready 
for mounting. The pin is removed from the straw and the cater- 
pillar skin, which often adlieres to the straw, must be gently re- 
moved with some delicate, blunt instrument or with the finger nail. 
A piece of wire a little more than twice the length of the cater- 
pillar is next cut, and, by means of forceps, bent as in Fig. 77, 
the tips a little incurved ; a little shellac * is placed at the distal 
extremity of the loop, the wire is held by the forceps just beyond 
this point, so as to prevent the free ends of the wire from spread- 
ing, and they are introduced into the empty body of the cater- 
pillar as far as the forceps will allow ; holding the loop and gently 
opening the forceps, the caterpillar is now pushed over the wire 
with extreme care, until the hinder extremity has passed half-way 
over the loop and the shellac has smeared the interior sufficiently 
to hold the caterpillar in place when dry; the extremities of the 
parted wires should reach nearly to the head. Nothing remains 
but to curve the doubled end of the wire tightly around a pin with 
a pair of strong forceps and to place the specimen, properly 
labelled, in a place where it can dry thoroughly for two or three 
days before removal to the cabinet. 
For more careful preservation and readier handling Mr. Goossens 
employs a different method, placing each specimen in a glass tube, 
like the test tube of the chemist. The wire is first bent in the 
middle and the bent end inserted in a hole bored in the smaller 
end of a cork of suitable size, so as nearly to pass through it; the 
loops are then formed as above; both ends of the cork are var- 
nished, and a label pasted around the portion of the cork which 
enters the tube, thus guarding both specimen and label from dust, 
and the latter from loss or misplacement. After two or three days 
the cork with the caterpillar attached is placed in its corresponding 
tube and the tube may be freely handled. 
* To prepare this, the sheets of dark shellac should be preferred to the light, and dis- 
Solved in forty per cent. alcohol, 
