fancies.
Unscrupulously we destroy every insect whose presence displeases us,
harmless as they may be to our own persons. The _aphides_ on our flowers,
the moths in our furs, the "beetles" in our kitchens--all die by thousands
at our pleasure. Then, if all this be right, are we not also justified in
appropriating a little butterfly life to ourselves, and does not the mental
feast that their after-death beauty affords us at least furnish an equal
excuse for their sacrifice with any that can be urged in favour of any
animal slaughter, just to tickle the palate or minister to our grosser
appetites? To this query there can be, I think, but one fair answer, so we
may return with a better face to the question, "How to kill a butterfly."

[Illustration: VIII.]

{53}

I have alluded above to a painless mode of doing so, doubtless applicable
to all insects. I know it answers admirably with the large moths, so
tenacious of life under other circumstances. This potent agent is
_chloroform_, whose pain-quelling properties are so well known as regards
the human constitution.

There is a little apparatus[8] constructed for carrying this fluid safely
to the field, and letting out a drop at a time into the box with the
captured insect, taking care that the drop does not go on to the insect. Or
a wide-mouthed bottle may be used, having at the bottom a pad of
blotting-paper, or some absorbent substance, on which a few drops of
chloroform may now and then be dropped. The insect being slipped into this,
and the stopper or hand being placed over the bottle's mouth, insensibility
(in the insect) follows immediately, and in a few minutes, at most, it is
completely lifeless.

But the usual and quickest mode of despatch is by _a quick nip between the
finger and thumb applied just under the wings_, causing, for the most part,
_instantaneous death_: and this can be done through the net, when the {54}
inclosed butterfly shuts his wings, as he usually does when the net wraps
round him.

Now take one of your thin pins, and pass it through the thorax of the
butterfly, while open or shut, and put it into the corked lining of your
pocket-box. So secured, the butterfly will travel uninjured till you reach
home; but a heap of dead butterflies in a box together will, in the course
of a long walk, so jostle together, as to entirely destroy each other's
beauty, rubbing off all their painted scales, when, of course, they are as
butterflies no longer.