There is no part of our country in which one cannot form a beautiful
local collection, and any young person who wants amusement,
instruction, and benefit from two, three, or more weeks in the country
can find all in catching butterflies and moths, arranging them, and
studying them up.
Provide yourself first with two tools, a net and a poison bottle. The
net may be made of any light material. I find the thinnest Swiss
muslin best. Get a piece of iron wire, not as heavy as telegraph wire,
bend it in a circle of about ten inches diameter, with the ends
projecting from the circle two or three inches; lash this net frame to
the end of a light stick four or five feet long. Sew the net on the
wire. The net must be a bag whose depth is not quite the length of
your arm--so deep that when you hold the wire in one hand you can
easily reach the bottom with the bottle (to be described) in the other
hand. Never touch wing of moth or butterfly with your fingers. The
colors are in the dusty down (as you call it), which comes off at a
touch. Get a glass bottle or vial, with large, open mouth, and cork
which you can easily put in and take out. The bottles in which
druggists usually get quinine are the most convenient. It should not
be so large that you cannot easily carry it in your pocket. Let the
druggist put in the bottle a half ounce of cyanide of potassium; on
this pour water to the depth of about three-fourths of an inch, and
then sprinkle in and mix gently and evenly enough plaster of Paris to
form a thick cream, which will _set_ in a cake in the bottom of the
vial. Let it stand open an hour to set and dry, then wipe out the
inside of the vial above the cake and keep it corked. This is the
regular entomological poison bottle, used everywhere. An insect put in
it dies quietly at once. It will last several months.
These two tools, the net and the poison bottle, are your catching and
killing instruments. You know where to look for butterflies. Moths are
vastly more numerous, and while equally beautiful, present more
varieties of beauty than butterflies. They can be found by daylight in
all kinds of weather, in the grass fields, in brush, in dark woods,
sometimes on flowers. Many spend the daytime spread out, others with
close shut wings on the trunks of trees in dark woods. The night moths
are more numerous and of great variety. They come around lamps, set
out on verandas in the night, in great numbers. A European fashion is
to spread on tree trunks a sirup made of brown sugar and rum, and
visit them once in a while at night with net and lantern. Catch your
moth in the net, take him out of it by cornering him with the open
mouth of your poison bottle, so that you secure him unrubbed.
Now comes the work of stretching your moths. This is easy, but must be
done carefully. Provide your own stretching boards. These can be made
anywhere with hammer and nail and strips of wood. You want two flat
strips of wood about seven-eighths or three-fourths of an inch thick
and eight to fourteen inches long, nailed parallel to each other on
another strip, so as to leave a narrow open space between the two
parallel strips. Make two or three or more of these, with the slit or
space between the strips of various widths, for large and small moths
and butterflies. Make as many of them, with as various widths of slit,
as your catches may demand. Take your moth by the feet, gently in your
fingers, put a long pin down through his body, set the pin down in the
slit of the stretching board, so that the body of the moth will be at
the top of the slit and the wings can be laid out flat on the boards
on each side. Have ready narrow slips of white paper. Lay out one
_upper_ wing flat, raising it gently and carefully by using the point
of a pin to draw it with, until the lower edge of this upper wing is
nearly at a right angle with the body. Pin it there temporarily with
one pin, carefully, while you draw up the _under_ wing to a natural
position, and pin that. Put a slip of paper over both wings, pinning
one end above the upper and the other below the under wing, thus
holding both wings flat on the stretching board. Take out the pins
first put in the wings and let the paper do the holding. Treat the
opposite wings in the same way. Put as many moths or butterflies on
your stretching board as it will hold, and let them remain in a dry
room for two, three, or more days, according to size of moths and
dampness of climate. Put them in sunshine or near a stove to hasten
drying. When dry, take off the slips of paper, lift the moth out by
the pin through the body, and place him permanently in your
collection.--_Wm. C. Prime, in N.Y. Jour. of Commerce._
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