68 
NATURE NOTES. 
having laid a quantity of eggs on the strip of cork where they 
were pinned. This was a dreadful business, and filled me with 
compunction. It was also always a trial to have to pinch the 
smaller butterflies : but it was supposed that all this had to be 
done, and done it was. Coleop^era fared better in our hands 
(we were three ambitious young collectors), for the boiling water 
in which the beetles were soused was bound to kill outright. 
All this system of killing may or may not deaden the sensi- 
bilities of those who practise it. INIore often than otherwise, 
with advancing age, the feeling of tenderness grows greater for 
“ our little brothers and sisters.” But is it not a pity that so 
many short lives should be thus uselessly and even painfull}' 
shortened ? That, for ourselves we should have this remorse — 
small though the pangs of it comparatively be — added to all the 
rest in after years? And then, apart from the squandering of 
life and unmeant cruelties of youth, does not all that traffic in 
chrysalids, &c., with the Natural History shops, serve to en- 
courage a trade which in the long run must affect the continu- 
ance of some of the rarest and most beautiful of our English 
insects ? IMay not some much-sought-after species practically 
cease to exist? Numbers are season after season collected in 
the Cambridgeshire fens : lovely green and brown pupae. At- 
tracted once by some of them in a “ naturalist’s ” window, I 
went in and selected two or three from several drawers-full that 
were brought out. I believe they were pupae of the scarce 
swallow-tail, but they never came to anything, and they were 
the first and last I ever purchased. 
Instead of the collections laboriously made, of stiffened 
fading specimens, doomed eventually to be tired of and spoilt 
by dust and mites, how far more healthy and pleasant, for at 
least the youthful entomologist, to observe the habits and 
manners of the living insect ! There is too much of killing in 
all branches of Natural History, too little reverence for life, 
whether in its higher or humblest forms. No one can believe 
until he tries it, what the delight is of watching the movements 
of some beautiful or curious insect, either in the open, or kept 
for a little time under a glass on the table. For those who 
have time and patience, it is perhaps still better to make a pet 
of it if possible, in ways Mrs. Brightwen knows so well how to 
teach. A few notes, a word or so describing the living creature, 
with its name and family, and perhaps a small drawing of it 
carefully made, and then to set it free, uninjured, to go where- 
soever it will — this surely is better than killing and pinning a 
hundred insects amongst the dull, forlorn ranks of a collection. 
The difficulties which apparently belong to the rearing of 
insects, are always rather sickening. In that most interesting 
quarter of the “ Zoo,” the insect houses, the pleasure and 
wonder of seeing live foreign butterflies is too much tempered 
by the painful spectacle of the newly born, bred to misery. 
Some with fresh unsullied wings, some battered and dying, all 
