tue resided in the barrel, and
accordingly carted it off into the woods, and was rewarded by rarities
previously unknown. A sage subsequently conceived the grand idea that
the virtue resided in the sugar and not in the cask, and afterwards
came the idea of an improved "sugar," made as follows:

Coarse brown sugar (foots), 1 lb.

Porter (or ale), 1 gill.

Treacle (common), 0.25 lb.

Rum, a wineglassful or 0.5 quartern.

Mix together the sugar, treacle, and beer in a saucepan, and bring the
mixture to the boiling point, stirring it meanwhile. Put it in corked
bottles, and just before you wish to use it add the rum. Aniseed is
sometimes used as the flavouring medium. Honey is also substituted for
sugar, and sometimes the whole is mixed unboiled; but if the collector
will try the foregoing recipe, the result of many years' experience,
he will, I am sure, be thoroughly satisfied.

The entomologist having provided himself with a bottle of the
foregoing mixture, a tin pot to pour it into, and a brush to lay it on
with, the net figured at Fig. 46, the cyanide bottle, a collecting
box, and a lantern, is equipped for sugaring.

A special sugaring can may be made from a tin canister, to the rim of
which a sort of funnel has been soldered in such a manner as to
prevent any spilling of the contents, and to the lid of which a brush
has been affixed. The wood-cut (Fig. 51), will explain.

This is, however, but a "fad," intended to do what it never does--viz,
keep your fingers from sticking, and "your tongue from evil speaking"
about the "messiness" of the sugar.

Fig. 51--Sugaring can.

All seasons of the year (except when too great an abundance of a
favourite flower abounds) yield a certain percentage of moths
attracted by sugar. Mild nights in the depth of winter, or in very
early spring, sometimes afford rarities, and certainly many hybernated
common species. Warm, cloudy nights, with a little wind stirring, are
generally the most favourable; but one of the best nights I ever had
amongst the "Peach Blossoms" and "Buff Arches" (Thyatira batis and
derasa) was in a wood in Warwickshire, when the rain fell in torrents,
accompanied with fierce lightning and thunder, from about 11 p.m.
until 6 the next morning. On this night everything swarmed, a hundred
or more common things on one patch of sugar being of frequent
occurrence.

Moonlight nights are, as a rule, blank ones for the "sugarer"