board should be
"pitched" or "bevelled" 0.125 in. on each side to its outer edge. On
top of each half, a piece of 0.125 in. cabinet cork C C is glued, and
also in the groove B, where shown at C.

Presuming that you have a "Red Admiral" to set with 1.125 in. or a No.
13 pin, you will find, if allowing 0.125 in. for the body, that after
setting an insect in a board of this kind the matter will be pretty
evenly adjusted--that is to say, about 0.5 in. of pin above and below
the butterfly. This allows the insect when placed in the cabinet to be
well clear of the paper, and is the mode now generally adopted by
those entomologists who effect a compromise between the ridiculous
English low setting and the Continental "high-set." What the real
objections are to this latter setting it has always puzzled me to
discover, unless it is the true British objection to anything foreign
or "French."

In a foreign Camberwell Beauty (Vanessa Antiopa) which I have just
measured, the relative proportions are as follow: The whole length of
the pin is 1.5 in, it comes through the body on the underside 0.875
in, whilst above the body it shows but a little more than 0.25 in. Its
advantages are manifest. First, it brings the insects much nearer the
eye when placed in the cabinet. Secondly, by its position the body is
prevented from greasing the paper of the cabinet (a not unimportant
item when the reader is told that the white velvet of a newly-lined
cabinet drawer has been utterly ruined by the grease from the bodies
of low-set insects). Thirdly, the almost total immunity from "mites"
which high-set insects enjoy.

This last consideration ought to induce our entomologists to adopt the
Continental set nem. con. For what entomologist dare tell me that he
has no mites in his cabinet? Is it the user of camphor, of creosote,
of phenic acid, or of corrosive sublimate? Why, then, this foolish
prejudice against the high-set? I have tried both plans, low setting
for fifteen, and high setting for ten years. I have, as an experiment,
mixed high-set insects in with low-set "exchanges." The brown dust
underneath the latter tells their tale too well. In a box of foreign
high-set insects which I have had by themselves for four or five years
little or no trace of the destroyer is to be seen.

Reform your "setting boards," then, say I; plough your grooves deeper,
and if you object to the flat appearance of the foreign set insects,
there is no earthly reason