9 



of using tragacanth on white cards at first, the specimens are fixed on old 

 stout cards (old post-cards for instance) with hot thin glue. The legs and 

 antennae stick to this much better, and the beetles give much less trouble to 

 set, as well as taking less than half the time occupied in the old way. The 

 cards, with locality and date written on them, are put away until a slack time, 

 when the specimens are reset by cutting off pieces of the card containing them 

 and dropping these into boiling water, when the specimens at once float to 

 the surface and are laid on blotting paper to dry, and then mounted with- 

 out any trouble with tragacanth on white card. When dry the cards are cut 

 so as to carry a single specimen, pinned, and placed in the cabinet or store- 

 box. I have adopted the plan of raising all my specimens to the very top of 

 a No. 8 (D. F. Taylor) or No. 9 (Kirby, Beard, & Co.) pin. The latter 

 are much preferable, for they are a stronger pin, the points do not turn up 

 so easily, and they possess a very great advantage in having rounded heads 

 (not flattened) by which they can be laid hold of with a pair of pliers and the 

 specimens removed or placed in the drawer without disarranging others. 



Just one word about the preservation of specimens. From personal ex- 

 perience I can testify that if specimens are kept in a damp room (the rooms 

 in a corner house, for instance, are nearly always damp) they cannot be pre- 

 vented from becoming mouldy, and they require to be touched occasionally with 

 methylated spirit. The best preventative of mites, in my opinion, and I have 

 tried nearly everything, is naphthaline, a white crystalline sickly-smelling 

 substance, which can be shaken into the drawers, or placed in the camphor 

 cells usually present in the drawers of good cabinets, or tied in little muslin 

 bags and pinned in the corner of the store boxes. 



Having procured a few specimens of beetles, and having so mounted them 

 that they may at the same time be guarded from injury and displayed in their 

 most natural manner, the next step, and the one which is usually the most 

 difficult to accomplish, and which it is the purpose of these papers to simplify 

 to some extent, is the finding out by what name any particular species is 

 known to the scientific world. 



Just as the various kinds of man may be classified in particular groups, the 

 members of which agree in possessing characters not possessed by others ; 

 just as we may group the European races as one class, the Negro races as 

 another, the Mongolian races as another, and so on, so may beetles be classed 

 in various groups — each known as a Sub-order — the members of which differ 

 from all others in the possession of particular features of structure. Thus 

 we may place together in one group all those beetles which agree in the pos- 

 session of jaws formed for devouring flesh, with filiform antennas, and with 

 hind legs formed for rowing the creature through water, such group constitu- 



