"chip-boxes" and "assembling." 303 



witli a large bagful or pocketful of these boxes on starting 

 out, as one motli only goes in eacli box, leaving one pocket 

 empty on the reverse side of your coat to receive the boxes 

 when filled, in order not to mix the empty with the full ones. 

 Second, you are not quite sure at night as to "rubbed" or 

 '* chipped " specimens, and may find in the morning your boxes 

 filled with worthless things, which a brief introduction to the 

 cyanide bottle would long before have revealed. Third, the 

 most important fact, that though there are many insects which 

 rest quietly when boxed, there is a large percentage which pass 

 the time of their captivity in madly dashing themselves against 

 the walls of their prison, and a boxed insect of this turn of 

 mind presents a sorry sight in the morning, many stages, in 

 fact, on the wrong side of " shabby-genteel." Then when, after 

 a night's severe work, you are limping home in the morning, 

 thinking how cold it is — until roused to action by the appearance 

 of some unexpected insect — then, indeed, how much more cold 

 and hoUow seems the world, when, suddenly catching your tired 

 foot in a stump or tangle of grass, you roll over on the full 

 pocket side and hear (and feel) the boxes burst up on the 

 unhappy moths within. I have gone through it all, and I 

 don't like it! 



Assembling. — I had almost forgotten to mention another ex- 

 traordinary way of catching moths (chiefly Bomhyces), by what is 

 called " assembling," which is exposing in a gauze-covered box 

 a virgin female, who, by some mysterious power "calls" the 

 males of the same species around her in so infatuated a manner 

 that they will even creep into the collector's pocket in their 

 quest of the hidden charmer. 



In a highly interesting paper in the " Country," of 2nd Oct., 

 1873, Dr. Guard Knaggs gave a very full account of the theory 

 and practice of "assembling," so interesting, indeed, that I 

 venture to reproduce it in extenso. He says : 



" The generally accepted theory is that each female should, 

 at one or other period of her existence, captivate at least one of 

 the opposite sex, though it will be found by experience that 

 some species possess a far more potent influence for this pui'pose 

 than others. 



"It may be set down as a rale that females which are captured 



