276 PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY. 



In a foreign Camberwell Beauty {Vanessa Antiopa) wliicli I 

 liave just measured, the relative proportions are as follow: 

 The whole length of the pin is l^in., it conies through 

 the body on the underside iin., whilst above the body it 

 shows but a little more than ^in. Its advantages are mani- 

 fest. First, it brings the insects much nearer the eye when 

 placed in the cabinet. Secondly, by its position the body is 

 prevented from greasing the paper of the cabinet (a not unim- 

 poi-tant item when the reader is told that the white velvet 

 of a newly-lined cabinet drawer has been utterly ruined by 

 the grease from the bodies of low-set insects). Thirdly, 

 the almost total immunity from "mites" which high-set 

 insects enjoy. This last consideration ought to induce our 

 entomologists to adopt the Continental set nem. con. For what 

 entomologist dare tell me that he has no mites in his cabinet P 

 Is it the user of camphor, of creosote, of phenic acid, or of 

 corrosive sublimate ? Why, then, this foolish prejudice against 

 the high-set ? I have tried both plans, low setting for fifteen, 

 and high setting for ten years. I have, as an experiment, mixed 

 high-set insects in with low-set " exchanges." The brown dust 

 underneath the latter tells their tale too well. In a box of 

 foreign high-set insects which I have had by themselves for four 

 or five years little or no trace of the destroyer is to be seen. 

 Heform your " setting boards," then, say I ; plough your grooves 

 deeper, and if you object to the flat appearance of the foreign set 

 insects, there is no earthly reason why you should not " pitch " 

 your boards to the angle I show in Fig. 47, or to any other angle 

 you desire. The objection to this "high-set" lies in a nutshell: 

 it looks " odd " to one accustomed to the English method, and 

 that is really all to be advanced against its general use. 



Let me, therefore, ask my brother entomologists to give the 

 "" high-set " a fair trial, and not to be deterred by the sneers of 

 any novice. It may strengthen my pleading and terminate 

 the hesitation of the young entomologist if I mention here that 

 the officer in charge of the collection of lepidoptera in the British 

 Museum — the well-known authority, A. G. Butler, F.L.S., &c. 

 — is not only setting all newly-received butterflies and moths in 

 precisely the fashion advocated above, but is actually re-setting 

 all the old " low-set " insects in the same manner ! 



