pped" specimens, and
may find in the morning your boxes filled with worthless things, which
a brief introduction to the cyanide bottle would long before have
revealed.

Third, the most important fact, that though there are many insects
which rest quietly when boxed, there is a large percentage which pass
the time of their captivity in madly dashing themselves against the
walls of their prison, and a boxed insect of this turn of mind
presents a sorry sight in the morning, many stages, in fact, on the
wrong side of "shabby-genteel." Then when, after a night's severe
work, you are limping home in the morning, thinking how cold it
is--until roused to action by the appearance of some unexpected
insect--then, indeed, how much more cold and hollow seems the world,
when, suddenly catching your tired foot in a stump or tangle of grass,
you roll over on the full pocket side and hear (and feel) the boxes
burst up on the unhappy moths within. I have gone through it all, and
I don't like it!

ASSEMBLING--I had almost forgotten to mention another extraordinary
way of catching moths (chiefly Bombyces), by what is called
"assembling," which is exposing in a gauze-covered box a virgin
female, who, by some mysterious power "calls" the males of the same
species around her in so infatuated a manner that they will even creep
into the collector's pocket in their quest of the hidden charmer.

In a highly interesting paper in the "Country," of 2nd Oct, 1873, Dr.
Guard Knaggs gave a very full account of the theory and practice of
"assembling," so interesting, indeed, that I venture to reproduce it
in extenso. He says:

"The generally accepted theory is that each female should, at one or
other period of her existence, captivate at least one of the opposite
sex, though it will be found by experience that some species possess a
far more potent influence for this purpose than others.

"It may be set down as a rule that females which are captured at rest
during the time of day or night at which they should naturally be upon
the wing are unimpregnated, and may be used for attracting with fair
chances of success. There may be exceptions to this rule; my opinion
inclines to the belief that the butterflies take wing before
impregnation; but of this I am certain, namely, that the females of
butterflies--at any rate of certain species--have considerable
influence over the males.

Doubtless, too, there are many skittish Geometrae or slender-bodied