MOrNTINO INSECTS AS "GROUPS." 265 



tortoisesliell, peacock, and admiral butterflies are often bred in 

 hundreds for tbe purpose of making a "picture" of a snake 

 strangling a tiger, or a crown, or the wings are cut by puncbes 

 to form the petals of flowers, to be afterwards grouped under 

 sbades. All these things, though very curious, and really 

 striking if well done, are steps in the wrong direction, and on a 

 par with the use of humming and other birds for ladies' hats — 

 all of which adaptations of natural history objects to commerce 

 inexpressibly "worry" anyone with the slightest taste or feeling. 



If a really beautiful object is wanted, in order to show a 

 group of exotic or other insects as specimens, out of a cabinet, 

 you may mount them in as natural a manner as possible on 

 grasses or fine twigs, made as directed at page 242, setting 

 them off with a few foreign ferns, and inclosing the whole in a 

 *' mount," to hang up, or in a narrow oval shade with carved 

 oak or other stand ; or they may be scientifically and artisti- 

 cally mounted, to show the life-history of any one species, by 

 arranging the larvae feeding on a properly modelled repre- 

 sentation of its natural food-plant, the imagines, male and 

 female, with some few striking varieties, shown at rest or flying, 

 as also the eggs and the pupa-case, with a description of their 

 economy afi&xed. A few specimens of families or genera of 

 insects shown thus is, to my mind, of far greater importance, 

 especially to museums, than mere " collectors " are aware of. 



Many works have been written on the collecting and pre- 

 serving of these orders, and especially of the Lepidoptera, vide 

 Dr. Guard Knagg's work on "Collecting Lepidoptera," Rev. 

 Joseph Greene's " Insect Hunter's Companion," and ma-ny 

 others, including a little work on " Collecting Butterflies and 

 Moths" by myself. 



Cruelty has been advanced as a crime specially to be laid to 

 the charge of the student in entomology; but some of the 

 greatest workers in that science have been ladies and clergymen, 

 as also laymen of the most humane and advanced scientific 

 principles. A vast amount of ignorant ideas, carefully nursed, 

 are used as weapons against the entomologist — the pet one of 

 which is, that impalement of a living insect through the head 

 constitutes the sole aim and end of the collector. The fact is 

 curiously inverse of this, for not only are insects captured for 



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