68 
THE entomologist’s RECORD. 
above mentioned Tortrix, I kill with tobacco smoke or chloroform and 
the larger ones with — what no one up to the present seems to have 
made much mention of, but what I consider invaluable — a solution 
of oxalic acid. I use it for such things as Sphingid^, most Bombyces, 
Notodontid^, some large Noctu.<e, and all colours which seem to be 
affected by ammonia. A steel pen with one nib broken off is a good 
thing to use. Dip it in the acid and introduce it well into the 
underside of the thorax; a steel pen, however, quickly, corrodes if left 
in the acid, but an entomological friend made me a very good 
pricker of a mixture of silver and platinum, which does not corrode 
although constantly in the acid. It is very fine (about one-sixteenth of 
an inch in diameter), tubular, in order that it may take up a quantity of 
the acid, and finely pointed, so that a very small moth can be pricked 
with it. For all small species that I want to kill with oxalic acid, I find 
it best to put them into a cyanide bottle first, just long enough to quiet 
them, or chloroform them, which is perhaps just as easy; larger species 
will generall) allow themselves to be picked out of the breeding cages 
and undergo the operation without an anaesthetic ! If not, a drop of 
chloroform soon quiets them; of course the object is to get the wings 
back so as to hold them with the thumb and finger. Cyanide I don’t 
like at its best. How is one to leave the moths in cyanide from 
thirty-six to forty-eight hours ? For fifty or sixty macros you would 
want about twenty bottles to accommodate them, and as these are to 
remain in the bottles two days you will probably require another 
twenty bottles for the next day’s captures. This seems to be rather an 
undertaking, especially if you are away from home ; and we may put 
a good deal of bad setting down to the use of the cyanide bottle, 
particularly among the micros. Compared with the above, how easy 
is the use of ammonia ; you come home after a hard day’s collecting, 
and after taking out the very few specimens you do not care to trust 
in ammonia, turn out your boxes into the killing tin, perhaps a hundred 
or more micros among them (which I should hardly care to imagine in 
cyanide bottles), and the next morning — all beautifully ready to set. I 
may add that if Mr. Turner made a small hole in the lids of his 
boxes with a thick needle, red hot, it would save him the trouble of 
tilting the lids when putting them into the ammonia. This refers to 
glass bottomed boxes ; chip boxes do not need it as the ammonia 
fumes will penetrate them. The size of my killing tin may be a hint 
to some, it is about fourteen or fifteen inches high, by about five in 
diameter. — \Vm. Farren, Union Road, Cambridge. 
The Fauna of South London. — Following up the suggestion of 
Mr. H. J. Turner, in the Record for last month, that other entomolo- 
gists should record their observations as a contribution towards the 
fauna of our suburban districts, I have looked up the notes of my cap- 
tures in Forest Hill and Sydenham, the district of which may be taken 
as a continuation of Brockley, and thus extending the distance from 
Charing Cross to about 6h miles. I find I have taken most of the 
insects noted by Mr. Turner, together with many others not noted by 
him. My observations extend over a period of six years (1885-1890). 
I have not, however, worked the district with a view of ascertaining 
what it will yield, as my time has been too limited foi’ that; my work 
has been principally at fences, and occasionally at the lamps. I 
