102 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
May 15. 
may not be occasionally damped. Be sure to keep them 
from the sun.’ So writes Mr. Greene. 
“ To rear larvae requires considerable care and atten¬ 
tion : the larva must be kept well supplied with fresh food; 
if its food is allowed to become withered and mouldy, the 
larva cannot be expected to retain its health. The plan 
used by Mr. Doubleday of Epping, our most successful 
rearer of insects, is, to get a glass cylinder aqd sink 
one end of it into a flower pot in which is some white 
sand, the sand is kept moist, and the food is stuck into 
it, so as to keep it fresh for some time; the larva is then 
placed on its food, a bit of gauze is tied over the top of 
the cylinder, and the flower-pot and cylinder being kept 
out-of-doors, the larva is as nearly as possible in a state 
of nature, and no doubt larvae are quite of Mr. Squeers’ 
opinion, that ‘it is a blessed thing to be in a state of 
nature.’ 
HOW TO KILL LEIUDOPTEIU. 
“ The modes of killing in use among collectors are 
very various; some use prussic acid, some use chloro¬ 
form; bruised laurel leaves is a convenient way of 
obtaining the effects of the former poison, without 
placing anything dangerous in the hands of young 
people. The receipt for preparing them is as under. 
“Gather one hundred laurel leaves, the juiciest you 
can find (yet they must on no account be wet when 
gathered); take two or three at a time, and then hammer 
them till they are well bruised; then with a pair of 
scissors cut them into small pieces—as small as you 
like, and place them in an air-tight vessel, so secured 
by some contrivance that the pieces shall not roll about 
loose. 
“For large moths and sphinges it is necessary to use 
a more violent poison, and a quill dipped in saturated 
solution of oxalic acid should be inserted beneath the 
thorax of the insect, by which means the largest species 
may be killed almost instantly. Those who want an 
off-hand way of killing insects, when neither acids, laurel 
leaves,or chloroform are at hand, will find, that by burn¬ 
ing one or two brimstone matches under an inverted 
tumbler, beneath which the insects to be killed have to 
be placed, and leaving the inverted tumbler full of 
sulphureous fumes for a few minutes, the insects will 
be completely killed, but green moths will be liable 
to lose their colour. 
HOW TO PIN LEPIDOPTEltA. 
“ In the first place, the collector must supply himself 
with solid-headed pins, which he may obtain of W. 
Gale, Crown Court, Clieapside, London; they are sold 
in half ounce boxes, and Entomologists in the country 
can have them forwarded by post. 
The proper sizes to order are No. 6 for Sphinges and Bombyces. 
,, ,, ,, No. 8 for Noctuae. 
,, ,, ,, No. 8 and No. 10 for Geometrse. 
,, ,, ,, Nos. 19 and 20 for Micro-Lepidoptera. 
“ The pin must be inserted in the centre of the 
thorax, and held as nearly as possible vertical, if any¬ 
thing, with the point rather inclining backwards ; many 
collectors hold them with the point inclining forwards, 
which gives the iusect, when set, rather a silly appear¬ 
ance : the pin should be pushed well through the 
insect, so as to take firm hold of the cork, about one- 
third of an inch, at least, projecting beneath the thorax 
of the insect. 
HOW TO SET LEPIDOPTERA. 
“ The variety of apparatus that has been invented for 
this purpose would be rather puzzling to a beginner. 
Grooved and rounded corks are used by many for 
setting the Noctuce and Oeometrhlre upon, and those 
who have seen such contrivances can imitate them, but 
to explain them accurately by description would be 
difficult. For those who have not such contrivances, v r e 
therefore recommend a sheet of prepared cork, which 
should be glued on to a flat piece of wood, so as to 
keep it steady and prevent it from w r arping; then cut 
some braces of thick card-board of various lengths, 
from three-fourths of an inch to two inches, tapering 
nearly to a point at one end, the other end being about 
one-fourth of an inch broad ; insert on the brace at this 
broad end a good strong pin (I obtain of Mr. Gale a 
No. 12 pin, which answers this purpose), and when 
about to set out an insect—say a Vanessa Urticce or an 
Arctia Caja —place two of the longest braces about an 
inch apart, with their points converging, and let the 
broad end of the brace be kept well up from the board 
being some height up the pin, the narrow end being 
in contact or nearly so with the setting-board; these are 
the - under braces, and the insect is then to be placed 
midway betw’een them, and its wings expanded over 
these braces, and kept in their place by the use of smaller 
braces. The insect may thus be made to assume a 
rounded form, that is to say, the edges of all the wings 
are deflected so as just to touch the setting board ; it 
gives the insect a graceful, pleasing appearance, but 
surely not a natural one. On the Continent, insects are 
always set on flat setting boards, with a groove to adjust 
the body, so that by applying flat braces over the w'ings 
they are easily kept perfectly flat and horizontal. The 
same plan is adopted here by many collectors of Micro- 
Lepidoptera, and in many genera is absolutely essential, 
or the collector must despair of having his specimens 
named, as the characters frequently lie in the very tip 
of the cilia. Insects should be left on the setting 
board from one to four days, according to the size of 
the species and the dryness of the weather. 
“ In summer, care must be taken to exclude mites 
from the setting boards, or they will infallibly destroy all 
the best species; keeping a good supply of camphor will 
not always be found sufficient on the setting boards, 
which are of necessity exposed to the air, but a mixture 
of equal parts of oil of thyme, oil of anise, and spirits 
of wine, spread over the setting board, and laid on the 
(jrooves more especially, will be found of greater effect 
than camphor.” 
Of what the older entomologists will be glad to find 
collected annually in a volume, the following is an 
example. 
“ ROSLERSTAMMIA PRONEBELIA, W.V.; a 
single specimen of this very conspicuous species was 
taken at Sutherlandshire, in May last, by Mr. Buxton; 
its capture is recorded in the Zoologist, page 4437. The 
insect is very rare on the Continent; and though known 
to the authors of the Wiener, Verzeichniss, andFabricius 
who mis-spells it promulella, it had been quite lost sight 
of by later authors (unless w r e except Hubner, whose 
figure, it is most charitable to suppose, was made from a 
description, form and colour both being so excessively 
faulty), till lately it has been noticed by Herrich- 
Sclhifier and Reutti. The extraordinary way in which 
some species seem entirely to disappear, and then, after 
a lapse of many years, simultaneously turn up in many 
distant localities, is one of the great marvels of Ento¬ 
mology. 
“ Alis anticis viridi-aureis, costa ipsa in medio dilute 
lutea; alis posticis dilute luteis griseo-fmbriatis. Exp. al. 
6± lin. 
“ Head dark yellow, in front deep purple. Face and palpi 
pale yellow. Antenna; dark fuscous, a short space before 
the apex white. Anterior wings shining golden green, 
darkest towards the base near the costa; the costa, from a 
little before the middle to beyond the middle, is pale 
I yellowish; cilia pale greyish bronze. Posterior wings pale 
! yellowish , with all the margins rather dark fuscous, darkest 
