CAPTTJEl5ra LEPIDOPTERA AT NIGHT. 297 



Just before dusk get your sugar painted on the trees, at 

 about the beigbt o£ your chest, in long narrow strips, taking 

 care not to let any fall at the foot of the tree or amongst the 

 adjacent bushes (though I have sometimes done very well by 

 sugaring low down near the foot of the tree). Just as the 

 nightjars and bats begin to fly you will have finished the last 

 tree of your round, and rapidly retracing your steps to the first 

 you will perhaps see a small moth, with wings raised, rapidly 

 flitting up and down your patch of sugar. This is most pro- 

 bably the "Buff Arches," usually the first to come; in fact, 

 during the summer months, it is perhaps as well to get the 

 sugar on at eight o'clock, as I have known this species, the 

 *' Peach Blossom " and the " Crimson Un- 

 dei-wings " {Catocala promissa and sponsa), 

 to come on the sugar in bright light while 

 yet the last rays of the sun were lighting 

 the westward side of the tree-trunk, when 

 all the rest lay in shadow. 



If you are not facile ^rinceps at 

 "bottling," do not attempt it with the 

 three or four species named above, but 

 strike them with the net at once, for they 

 are the most skittish of noctuse, especially 

 in the early part of the evening. Strik- j,^^^ s-Z.-Impalefw 

 ing down such insects with a parchment- 

 covered battledore, which Dr. Guard Knaggs considers inflicts 

 the least injury, or impaling them with a triangle of needles 

 stuck in cork, in the manner shown in Fig. 52, or even with 

 a single darning needle, has been recommended, but after a 

 trial I have come to the conclusion that such plans are 

 clumsy in the extreme. A little practice will enable the 

 beginner to dispense even with the net, which tends to 

 "rub" such dashing or unquiet insects, and to rapidly cover 

 them with a large cyanide bottle, or, failing this, with the 

 instrument shown in Fig. 53, which is a combination of the 

 " drum " and cyanide bottle, and will be found very useful for 

 skittish insects. A, represents a cyanide bottle with no neck — a 

 wine or ginger-beer bottle cut down, by filing it around, and 

 then tapping it smartly, does very well on an emergency. On 



TJ 2 



