31 



I am tempted to enumerate some of the discouraging circumstances encoun- 

 tered by the biolos^ist in this field. 



Among the Lepidoptera, a majority of the Bomhycidce, Geometridce and 

 NoctuidcB adapt themselves readily to the conditions of the rearing cage. They 

 accept the food provided and make the best of it, even after it has become a 

 little dry, which must sometimes occur when the caretaker is pressed for time. 

 They thrive in the closer and darker air, and take such exercise as they require 

 within their narrow walls of glass and wire-cloth, and when the metamorphic 

 impulse comes, they contentedly weave their cocoons in the corners of their 

 prison, or bury themseves in the two or three inches of cemeterial earth in the 

 bottom of the cage, and safely pass those mysterious transformations which 

 give to this class of beings their pre-eminent interest. 



But there is a great deal of individuality, or rather, specificality, in insects^ 

 and not infrequently specimens of larvae are found for which the collector taxes 

 his ingenuity in vain to provide. Not the freshest of leaves, the cleanest swept 

 earth or the most well-aired of cages wiil seem to promote their development. 

 They wander about the cage with an exhausting activity that pathetically 

 suggests a realisation of their imprisoned condition. They nibble languidly at 

 their food, and aimlessly spin mats of web in inconvenient places, over the cracks 

 of the door or cover, for instance, and, before long, comes the morning, when, 

 they are discovered dead and discolored in the bottom of the cage, and no more 

 of them to he obtained until another season. Or perhaps the cocoons are spun or 

 the transformation to pupse safely effected under ground, and the entomologist 

 has full confidence that in due time he will obtain the much desired imago, and, 

 when it ma}^ be expected, watches hourly for its emergence, and is rewarded by 

 the appearance of an Ophion or a swarm of TaoJiina flies, or of some still 

 smaller enemy, whose existence he did not even suspect. 



Again, the collector may be obliged to delegate his cares temporarily to 

 another, who, unused to the almost constant supervision necessary, suffers the 

 precious larva to starve, or, by an oversight, tosses it out with the withered 

 leaves, or crushes it in the hinges of the door, or, still more aggravating, thought- 

 lessly raises the cover and allows some long looked for imagine to dart out and 

 escape through an open window. All that he will remember for the benefit of 

 the person chiefly concerned, will be that it was a moth and " seemed something 

 peculiar." As the entomologist cannot afford a separate cage for each species, 

 and as he had probably put his choice unknown in with some well known forms 

 of which he wishes simply to increase his duplicates, he probably grasps at the 

 hope that the escaped insect was one of the latter, and so defers the full realiza- 

 tion of his loss until weeks and months have passed and all his expected species 

 have emerged, and then he hopes for better success another year, and finds " life 

 well worth living " for this and similar reasons, which only an ardent naturalist 

 can appreciate. 



In some respects too much care is as subversive of success as too little. For 

 instance, the very natural curiosity which the student feels to examine into the 

 state of the insect after it has been buried for a short time in the earth. So he 

 sifts the soil in his cage; and though he handles it with all caution, the frail 

 earthen cell in which the treasure is enclosed falls in pieces, and the poor cater- 

 pillar in complete helplessness squirms in the loosened earth. Despairingly he 

 tries with clumsy fingers to re-inclose it in the fragments of its cell, or attempts 

 to form a substitute by packing the earth so that it may not be smothered. In 

 vain. In ninety -nine cases in a hundred he Jiever sees the imago. 



While the hardy pupse of most noctuids will bear any amount of handling, 

 and by their activity will beat hard the earth about them at any time, a few 



