30 
MOTHS AND BUTTEBELIES. 
low to near the earth anything which is thrown into the air; and 
often I have captured insects which persisted in alighting far out of 
the reach of my net, by throwing my hat in the air and taking them 
as they followed it down. 
When collecting in the woods where butterflies are wild and fly 
high, one may materially increase his captures by using a decoy, by 
pinning a dead specimen with its wings spread, in a conspicuous 
place, the top of a low bush with the leaves stripped off, for instance, 
and, standing ready with the net, the butterflies may be taken as they 
fly down and hover over the decoy. A live decoy may be used in the 
same manner by tying a thread around the body of the insect between 
the abdomen and the thorax and allowing it to flutter about where it 
can be readily seen. This method I have used very successfully in 
tropical countries to capture the superb but wild and high flying 
Papilios and the gorgeous Ornithopteras. I have sometimes been 
obliged to shoot with a shotgun the first specimen for a decoy. A 
piece of cardboard painted to resemble a butterfly I have seen 
answer for a decoy, and it has the advantage of durability. 
Of some species of butterflies the males will be found to out¬ 
number the females three to one or more in the specimens taken. 
That there really are so many more males than females I very much 
doubt, as in rearing specimens from the eggs or the larvae the sexes 
seem pretty evenly divided; but possibly, on account of the males 
being more active and flying more in the open or being frequently 
more showy, the collector will almost invariably take more males 
than females of a given species. This discrepanc}^ is shown in the 
catalogues of those who have butterflies for sale, where the females 
of some species are often two or three times the price of the males. 
The females are usually much larger than the males, and are 
sometimes, though rarely, richer in their coloring. The males of 
some species may readily be distinguished from the females by not¬ 
ing the claspers on the end of the abdomen of the former. The 
females frequently have larger bodies than the males, their abdomens 
being distended with eggs. There are a good many kinds, however, 
where these distinctions are not readily seen and the sexes are diffi¬ 
cult to separate. In some species the sexes very closely resemble 
each other, while in others they differ so much as to look.like totally 
different, insects. Take Argynnis cybele and Vanessa antiopa as 
examples of the former, and Saturnia io and Attacus promethia as 
representatives of the latter. 
