S-1141001_COMPLETO.pdf

6
APHORISM ATA ENTOMOLOGICA.
If you " do business in a large way," you will require several of these
boxes.
The next box to be procured, and to be now described, is of much
smaller dimensions, being what is commonly called the pocket box. It
may be made about six inches long, four wide, and two deep; but on
the same principle that you "cut your coat according to your cloth,"
so you can have your box made larger or smaller according to the
size of your pocket. Now, let this box be made of tin; and as to the
mode of making it, I have to give myself credit for, in the words of
my namesake, Miss Edgeworth's Francisco, "a discovery! a discovery!
which it concerns all" entomologists "to know!" as follows:—
Let this box, I say, which is to take out with you when you go
collecting, be made of tin, and be of the dimensions just given, or as
nearly so as may be most convenient to yourself. HaA r e it made to
open as shewn in the plate, not in the middle, as these boxes generally
are, but nearer to the top, so as to have only one side, the bottom one,
lined with cork, which should be papered or white-washed over, for the
^ reception of recent captures. Inside the lid, have a piece of perforated
zinc, which you can obtain at any good ironmonger's shop—fine wire
net work would do, but that it is liable to rust, especially under the
circumstances about to be narrated. Videlicet; this piece of metallic
gauze being fixed on a little hinge or hinges at the inner edge of the
lid, is to be made to open out, or shut in, at pleasure. Between it
and the lid, place a flat piece of sponge, and when you are going out
collecting, dip the top of the box, thus containing the sponge between
the actual lid and the "fly leaf" of zinc, in water. If it should
become dry, or rather so, which will naturally be the case in the hot
times of the year, when for the most part you go out collecting, all
you have to do is to dip it again in the first stream of water you come
to, which will probably not be again required to be done. The effect
is this: instead of your insects, even if ever so small, being dried up
by the time you return home, so as to be incapable of being set until
you have been at the additional trouble of relaxing them, they are as
fresh as at the moment they were first captured; and if you have not
time to extend them all that night, by again moistening the sponge, and
keeping them in this, so made, relaxing box, you will find them still
pliant the following morning. 'IntelbVis-ne.'?
The mention of the small moths brings me to the third kind of box
required. This, or rather these, for you should have two or three, or