ery handy
for picking up any other small objects.

In setting the larger beetles, as well as the various thick-bodied
insects, belonging to the orders Orthoptera, Neuroptera, Diptera, and
Hymenoptera, double braces instead of "setting"-boards may be used in
the following manner: The insect being pinned high on a board or piece
of cork, with legs extended, two large pieces of card, one for each
side, are brought up underneath the wings and close to the body by
pins stuck through the corners. This forms a rest for the wings when
extended, which are then braced on top of the cards by smaller braces
in the usual manner, the pins, however, of the braces falling outside
the supporting cards and fixing in the wood or flat cork underneath.

Many exotic insects--butterflies and moths--are set in this manner,
which is really "flat setting." If the braces are at any time too limp
and do not seem to clip the wings properly, a little piece of cork
just sufficient for the pin to slip through may be added on top of the
brace.

The larger beetles and other insects, such as the dragon-flies,
cicadas, grasshoppers, and "walking leaf" insects, should always have
the contents of the abdomen removed either by pressure, or by being
cut underneath, and, when empty, injected with a little of the
corrosive sublimate preparation, and afterwards filled out with wool
or blown out with a small blowpipe until the abdomen is again
distended and dry. Some insects which are narrow at the "waist" may be
advantageously snipped through at that part to remove the contents
therefrom, the body being afterwards fixed with gum or cement to its
normal position.

In the setting of beetles--as in other things--the ubiquitous Germans
and the Frenchmen beat us. Compare the beautifully foreign set
coleoptera, with our wretchedly lame and uneven-sided attempts. It is
impossible to mistake the ordinary English for foreign setting, and of
this I was curiously convinced on my arrival at Leicester, in the
Museum of which town I found some exquisitely-set specimens of
coleoptera. I said at once, "These are German-set." "No, indeed," I
was told, "they are set by a local man." I could not believe it; and
after great difficulty, the man himself even persisting in this
assertion, I discovered that they were all procured from Germany or
were set by a German friend.

This gentleman having subsequently shown me his method, I now give it
for the benefit of coleopterists: T