81 
HINTS TO YOUNG ENTOMOLOGISTS ON CATCHING, KEEPING, 
AND BREEDING INSECTS. 
By James Charles Dale, Esq., A.M., F.L.S. 
Some time ago you requested me to give you, for The Naturalist , a few hints 
as to the apparatus used by entomologists, and as some of your friends may be 
inclined to climb the mountains or explore the lake country during the next sea¬ 
son, I send the following extracts, &c., for that purpose, and hope your corres¬ 
pondents will give me a fine list of rare captures in return. 
The entomologist should first consult Dr. Letsom’s Naturalists and Travellers 
Companion, Donovan’s Instructions, Harris’s Aurelian and other works, 
Graves’s Naturalists Pocket-Book, Kirby and Spence, Miss Jermyn’s Fade 
Mecum, Curtis’s Instructions, Samouelle’s General Directions and Useful 
Compendium, &c. I have Ingpen’s Instructions interleaved, and a few blank 
leaves at each end for a list of rare insects, with the dates, localities, &c., as a 
pocket companion. 
The first thing is the dress. —A plain sportsman’s fustian jacket, with numer¬ 
ous pockets, not omitting the side or breast pocket for forceps or little bag-net, 
which is made of a single wire-hoop bent into a circle, and the ends formed into 
a handle, and which I think preferable to the forceps, especially for taking in¬ 
sects in a gravel-pit, where I lost with the forceps the first Chrysis succincta I 
ever saw, from a stone getting between the rings of the forceps. Mr. Tuther 
formerly told me of a light-green coat with fifteen pockets for nets, &c., but a 
large fustian-bag for your nets, umbrella, &c., and an angler’s basket for your 
boxes, vasculum (for sandwiches), and whiskey-flask (no bad accompaniment 
on the mountains) ; Jarvis’s India Rubber Polish, for thick shoes, to make them 
waterproof, or anti-attrition ; a horn for drinking, or smoking insects ; a tin case 
of Cocoa-powder or paste for breakfast; knee-caps for moss hunting, or a little bit 
of board with a cushion to kneel on in damp places. If you intend to ride on 
horseback any distance, it would be well to send your heavy luggage with the 
large corked box or setting-boards, cages, &c., by coach, to the inn nearest the 
locality you mean to collect, to await your arrival. You may then mount your 
horse, equipped with your lighter apparatus, such as you may be in want of 
before your arrival at the inn. Put your long nets, sticks, &c., into a long 
canvass-bag or a tin box like a quiver for arrows, with lock and key and rings, 
through which you may sling it on your back like a gun. 
All the travelling store-boxes, cages, nets, &c., should be made as portable as 
possible, and so as to fit each other in packing into the smallest compass, and it 
would be well if one screw or spring clasp fitted all the net sticks. 
