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COLLECTING DIPTERA: A FEW USEFUL DODQES. 



Rev. W. J. WINGATE, 



St. Peter's Vicarage, Bishop Auckland. 



A Net with A Window. — The Diptera are my hobby and often 

 when sweeping" one gets a score or two, sometimes a hundred or 

 two, of buzzing - excited flies in a single sweep of the net. As 

 many of them will generally be very small, and most of them 

 require close examination, I found it impossible to know what 

 I had got by merely looking into the net, so I had a transparent 

 celluloid watch-cover sewn into the end of my net which allows 

 the catch to be examined even with a lens by holding any 

 particular fly gently against the celluloid with the slack of the 

 net. It also enables you to see exactly what you are doing in 

 getting a particular fly into the killing-bottle. 



Simple Pocket Killing Bottles — For field killing bottles 

 I use small wide-mouthed bottles (about 4 inches high with a 

 mouth one inch in diameter), and still smaller ones for 'small 

 fry.' At the bottom I put a few discs of blotting paper pressed 

 in tightly and a sheet of the same round the inside to keep the 

 insects off any moisture condensed on the glass. Two or three 

 drops of benzine dropped in once or twice a week make a deadly 

 atmosphere for any Diptera or Hymenoptera. I am never with- 

 out such a bottle in my pocket, for I find windows, doors, and 

 walls most productive, and have often caught a good fly on a 

 house door when visiting before my knock was answered. Very 

 often the best things turn up when you don't expect them. 



Simple Nets with Removable Ends. — But I found that the 

 examination through the celluloid window was not enough, and 

 there was no time on the field to examine scores of living flies, 

 so I adopted the plan of putting the end of the net, with the 

 flies, into a sponge bag, into which a few drops of benzine or 

 chloroform had been dropped, and when reduced to quiescence 

 putting all the captures into a pill-box for home examination. 

 But that took much time, and it was not easy to get- the haul 

 out of the net safely, especially if there was wind. So I have 

 adopted the following, which I find a very great success. A is 

 the muslin net. Cut a little portion off the small end where 

 the diameter measures about four inches. Make a ring of whale- 

 bone OLit of the strips to be got at any drapers, a quarter of an 

 inch broad, and with a shoemaker's awl bore a row of needle 

 holes along one side (Fig. 3). Form it into a ring three inches 



Naturalist, 



