A collector’s outfit will vary considerably in different kinds of country, and depend to a certain extent upon the particular group of insects he is interested in. But there are some things he will require on every tramp through the bush. For general collecting the first thing needed is a strong leather bag; a large-sized school bag that can be slung over the shoulder is preferred by some entomologists, as it leaves their hands free; others carry a hand-bag; but a combination of both, with handle and also swivels to which a shoulder strap can be attached, is sometimes used, so that it can be carried either way. I prefer the hand-bag, though it has its disadvantages, and one is that when shaking or sweeping the scrub it is apt to be left behind, and time spent in returning for it; and if the scrub is thick, may have to be searched for. The bag should not be too big, for in a long day’s tramp it becomes a burden, and if string and paper be carried, galls, infested twigs, and foliage can always be made up into a bundle and attached to the bag when an extra good find has been made. Some collectors have the bag divided into compartments or pockets, which are very handy at times for bottles and tubes, but it must be borne in mind that every piece of leather adds weight.

With regard to nets, they must be adapted for the work they are to do; and first in importance comes the butterfly net. If one is in camp a simple net can be constructed with a ring of stout fencing wire, fashioned into a circle with the two ends bent down for about six inches, and tightly lashed to a straight sapling about eight feet in length; round the ring is sewn a strip of stout calico, to which is attached a mosquito net bag about 18 inches long, tapering to a rounded tip, and about 15 inches in diameter; this net is however a fixture and cannot be taken to pieces and folded up for travelling. Where nets can be obtained from dealers’ shops, there are some very neat and handy ones for packing up in small compass, such as the three fold net. The handle, like an ordinary light walking stick, is fitted at the end with a tubular Y; the base of the Y fits on to the handle, and the arm on either side receives the ends of the cane ring; the cane is shod with brass and jointed in three places, and there is a sheath to draw over each joint to form the ring; the net is then slipped on. A short stick is handy for many things; but when necessary a long sapling can be cut for a net-stick.

For catching wasps, flies, and other small insects a little hand-net about nine inches in diameter, made of mosquito net and a bit of fencing wire, is much more handy than the large butterfly net. When dragging water-holes or creeks a bag of cheese-cloth placed on the butterfly net ring will be found very serviceable, and will stand much rough use. A stout umbrella will be found one of the most useful collecting appliances when hunting in scrub or forest country. If the bushes are beaten or shaken with one hand while holding the open umbrella below them, the collector will be surprised at the number of fine things, large and small, that come tumbling down into the umbrella, including many that he would never see otherwise. In the dry western scrubs I find the early hours of morning between daylight and eight o’clock to be the best time for beating and shaking, as everything that falls then is more or less torpid; later in the day they begin to get very active and fly off when disturbed. Some collectors go to the trouble of having a special umbrella made of white material or lined with calico, so that the fallen insects can be more easily noticed, but the advantage is slight. Mr. Masters suggests the use of a sheet spread under the bushes, and the whole tree beaten and shaken. This method in suitable country has its advantages.

The killing bottles come next in importance, and the first and most commonly used is the cyanide bottle. An empty 1 oz. quinine bottle makes one of a very serviceable size, but any other light wide-mouthed bottle will answer the purpose. Place a piece of cyanide of potassium about 1½ inches square and ½ an inch in thickness at the bottom of the bottle, and then pour in enough liquid plaster of Paris to embed and cover it; drain off any surplus moisture with blotting paper; and when the plaster is set hard, close the bottle with a tight-fitting cork. It is an advantage to coat the top of the cork with red sealing-wax, so that if it is dropped or left behind, the bright cork will make it more conspicuous. Young collectors may get the insects covered with particles of damp plaster and perhaps spoilt; to prevent this, the plaster should be covered with scraps of paper, moss, dry grass, or some such material, to absorb the moisture and keep the specimens clean. The dead insects should always be turned out of the cyanide killing bottle on returning from a day’s hunt, for if kept long in the bottle they will often become more or less discoloured.

A killing bottle favoured by museum and professional collectors is a similar bottle, but, instead of using cyanide, a pad of cotton wool is placed in the bottom, on to which some chloroform is poured to charge the bottle. But when collecting is brisk and the cork constantly being taken out for fresh captures, the chloroform evaporates, and the bottle must be re-charged at intervals. When one is collecting different kinds of small specimens it is advisable to carry several small tubes charged with chloroform, and if a circular pad of blotting paper be carefully cut and pressed down on the wadding, the little creatures will not get their legs and antennae tangled in the fibre of the cotton. If delicate winged insects remain long in the moist atmosphere of the tube, their wings stick to the sides or curl up, so that it is wise to turn them out every now and then into pill boxes carried for the purpose, and any special treasures should be rolled up in soft paper. At one time most English entomologists used chopped laurel leaves in the bottle instead of cyanide; this foliage gives off a certain amount of hydrocyanic acid vapour, sufficient to kill insects, at the same time keeping them clean and relaxed so that they are easily mounted.

The collector’s bag should contain several empty tins of all shapes and sizes, to carry the hundred and one things found in a day’s collecting, such as live larvae, cocoons, galls, eggs, &c. When hunting for small moths the lepidopterist always carries a pocket full of small glass-bottomed boxes; the glassed portion is used to slip over the resting moth, which, when disturbed, at once flies upward to the glass, and the lid of the box is slipped under. These delicate little creatures are taken home alive, and can be killed in a jar and mounted while quite fresh. A stock of small tubes containing methylated spirit can be packed in one of the empty tins; these are very necessary to keep separate from one another specimens of ants, termites, or other insects taken direct from their nests. On a long trip one also wants a larger bottle or jar of spirit in which scorpions, millepedes, centipedes, and such-like creatures can be stored.

When timber is found infested with beetle or moth larvae, it should be secured and brought home, where it can be placed in a tin trunk, glass jar, or proper breeding cage and the perfect insects bred out. When engaged at this very profitable work a small hatchet and hand saw are needed to cut the branches. At all times a stout old butcher’s-knife should be among the kit, as it is useful for digging round the roots of trees and under logs, tearing bark off tree trunks, and if it be jagged on one edge will make a rough saw. A newspaper or two is handy for many things, among others to make envelopes in which to place butterflies.

Specimens collected in camp must be kept in good condition until they can be properly mounted at home; in a dry country this is not difficult, but in the wet season in a semi-tropical climate both botanical and entomological specimens are very liable to damage.

Most collectors put all the hard-bodied insects such as beetles into a wide-mouthed jar of methylated spirits, where they will keep indefinitely, but any beetles that are clothed with fine hairs or floury pubescence should be carefully pinned in a box, and, unless very large, will dry quickly. Some entomologists place their captures of this kind in clear carbolised sawdust in tins or jars: I have packed small specimens in circular tins in the following manner:—First a layer of camphor covered with a circular sheet of blotting paper fitting close into the tin, then the insects fresh from the killing tubes, and after sprinkling the insects with camphor a layer of blotting paper, and so on. Thus many thousands of micro-coleoptera, hemiptera, &c., could be securely packed and added to day by day until the tin was full, when a wad of cotton wool was placed on the last sheet of paper, and the tin put aside or posted to its destination.

With regard to butterflies, the collector can generally see whether they are good or damaged specimens as soon as they are taken out of the net; if the latter, he should let them go (unless unique or rare forms), for an imperfect or rubbed butterfly is comparatively valueless. If it be a perfect specimen, the wings should be folded together over the back, and a sharp nip on the thorax between the fingers will kill it in a moment. Each specimen should be placed in a folded paper envelope, made by crossfolding an oblong piece of soft paper in the shape of a triangle and folding down the overlapping edges. Packed side by side, a square tin will hold hundreds of these paper envelopes, which can be stored in this manner indefinitely or till the collector is ready to relax and set them. Thousands of butterflies are sent in these papers from all parts of the world to London for sale, and are usually disposed of at so much per hundred.

Moths cannot well be treated in this manner on account of the thickness of their bodies and the looseness of the scales upon their wings; they have therefore to be pinned in a corklined box as they are collected, but later on can be relaxed and their wings set as with the butterflies. When we come to the tiny moths known as Micro-lepidoptera, we find they require special treatment, and most lepidopterists take a box fitted with narrow setting boards, when out for a few days, and set their captures every evening before they become stiff, for otherwise many make very unsatisfactory specimens.

In collecting Hymenoptera the different groups need special treatment; and where there are several sexes dissimilar in size and structure they should be carefully kept together. Ants are always best collected from their nest, and a number of specimens of the different sexes secured and placed in a tube of methylated spirits. The locality and date should be written with a hard lead pencil upon a slip of paper and placed in the tube with them. A series can afterwards be sorted out and mounted, the large ones on pins and the smaller on gummed card. Wasps should be pinned, and when the forms with wingless females (Thynnidae and Mutillidae) are obtained in copula, a very common state in midsummer, they should be captured and killed together and the paired insects mounted with a check mark on each pin beside the locality and date label, so that no mistake can be made as to their identity.

The bulk of the Hemiptera will with their hard integument carry well in spirit or carbolised sawdust. Some of the more delicate of the Homoptera, such as the Psyllidae, Aphidae, and Coccidae (Scale insects), should be collected with their food plant. They can be obtained in various stages of their development; the perfect insects can be bred in confinement upon their food plants. They should be mounted on card when fresh, but, if not, can be placed in the camphor tin or even a dry tube plugged with cotton wool, but if the tube be corked they will spoil, owing to the moisture generated within the tube. In the case of scale insects, portions of the leaves, bark, or twigs infested with the tests of the injects can be cut to a uniform size and mounted with gum or small pin on card, and if mounted carefully make very neat specimens. Many of the larger Homoptera, such as cicadas, fulgorids and frog-hoppers, can be mounted, with the wings outspread, but should not go into spirits.

Orthoptera, particularly the large phasmids, are very unsatisfactory creatures to deal with when captured; often too large to go into a killing bottle, they have to be brought into camp alive. If a female, it may be kept a while to lay its eggs, as they are very interesting objects. The eggs can be mounted on card or placed in a small pill box and pinned beside the insect in the box. These insects, as well as all large grasshoppers, should be cut down the abdomen on the under side and the contents removed with forceps; a little paris green should then be sprinkled inside or some weak corrosive sublimate applied with a brush; then a wad of cotton wool should be pushed into the cavity to give shape to the empty body when it dries. In the case of the larger cockroaches, which are often very brittle when cleaned and dried, a bit of sheet cork instead of cotton wool can be shaped for a false body, coated with gum and slipped in; when pinned through the cork it makes a very firm specimen. Some collectors mount their grasshoppers and other orthoptera with the wings outspread, and as show specimens they look best, but take up a great deal of room; others mount the wings on one side, and leave the others folded down in their natural condition in repose, so that some idea is given of the natural form, and the outspread wings can also be examined for specific differences. In collecting phasmids and stick insects for transmission by post or packing in small space, the best plan is to get a slender stick and lay the insect along it with outstretched legs and folded wings, and then wind soft worsted thread round it from end to end; it can be unwound and mounted properly when received at its destination. Orthoptera should not be put into spirit with other specimens, as they lose their colour, become soft, and break up easily; they will however travel well in a 5 per cent. solution of formalin; this has a hardening effect and only alters the colour slightly unless the insects are kept in it for a considerable time. If kept in formalin for say a week and then packed in sawdust they will not rot or spoil as they often do when killed and packed before they are dried.

Neuroptera are delicate creatures, and many of them keep best if killed and placed in papers as in the case of butterflies, unless there is room to pin them in a store box. The bodies of the dragon-flies rot very quickly and break off very easily; if carefully handled they can be placed alive in papers with their wings folded over their backs, and will remain alive for several days, long enough to travel a considerable distance by post when dispatched direct to a specialist, who will then receive them with their natural colours. If kept in the store box it is advisable to impale the slender body with a bristle or grass stem, inserting it at the front of the thorax and pushing it through to the tip of the abdomen, but not far enough to injure the anal appendages. Many specimens can be pinned in the store boxes with the wings closed, and relaxed and mounted with outspread wings months afterwards.

Diptera is another group that requires delicate manipulation, particularly such species as “daddy-long-legs” (Tipulidae), mosquitoes (Culicidae), &c. When Skuse was collecting he always carried a pocket-box containing pinned card slips of various lengths, and a tube of gum, and, after killing the insects in a chloroform tube, he mounted them at once while they were flexible and the legs not detached. Theobald mounts his mosquitoes on fine pins, which are pushed from beneath through a circular piece of cardboard (these circular cards are stamped out with a wad-cutter); the legs are spread out and an ordinary pin pushed through the circle to pin them in a cabinet. The larger flies are pinned dry in the ordinary manner, and the smaller ones are carded.

Animal parasites, which belong to quite a number of groups, are obtained on the live birds or mammals as soon as they are shot. When the animals are dead the parasites leave the bodies as soon as they begin to get cold. They should be transferred at once to small spirit tubes, in which should also be placed a slip of paper upon which is written in lead pencil the name of the mammal or bird upon which it was taken, the date of capture, and the locality.

Lamp and Night Collecting.—In suitable localities a great haul of insects can often be obtained on a warm sultry summer night by laying a sheet on the ground with a powerful lamp on it and hanging another sheet behind the lamp; the insects are attracted to the light, and falling on the sheet are then easily captured. In camp many fine insects may be obtained round the lamp or camp fire; and during the wet seasons in North Queensland and the north coast of Australia I have taken many rare insects in this manner.

Sugaring is greatly practised in Europe; a suitable spot in a forest being chosen, a mixture of sugar and beer that have been boiled together is smeared upon the tree trunks and fences; at night-fall the ground is visited with a bull’s-eye lantern, and the insects (moths chiefly) that come to feed are captured, sometimes in great numbers. This has been tried by our collectors in Australia; but I have never had any success myself nor heard of anyone here who has had better fortune.

Trapping.—When settled down in a fixed collecting camp many beetles and other insects can be obtained by trapping. If in brush or forest land a number of empty jam or milk tins with the tops cut neatly off are buried, with the edges level with the surface of the ground, many carnivorous ground beetles tumble in, and will be found there on going round in the morning. If a bone or bit of meat be placed at the bottom of the trap, it often attracts certain beetles that feed on such food. In the same manner a dead bird or small animal half buried in the ground, or placed under a sheet of bark or log, will prove an attractive bait for the burying beetles and other curious and often rare species; a dead animal should therefore be always investigated by the beetle hunter, as it often hides entomological treasures.

Fallen timber always has a great attraction for all bark-feeding weevils, longicorns, and other small wood-borers that come to it as soon as the bark begins to wither. Here also come Cleridae, Antribidae and other carnivorous beetles to feed upon the smaller wood-borers, and many an hour can be profitably spent over a large fallen tree or bit of brush a few days after it has been chopped down, particularly in the tropical scrubs. Slicing the bark of living trees that exude any sap, and letting the bark hang down, attracts insects that feed on the sap or take shelter under loose bark; a number of such blazed tree trunks round a camp is a great source of revenue, particularly in the summer.

There are many other devices that the collector will only gain by experience in the field, which will enable him to obtain many curious specimens that a novice would never find.

Mounting, Setting, and Storing.—Having collected specimens, the next question is the storage of the insects. All entomological specimens (other than those kept in spirit tubes) must be preserved in close-fitting boxes lined with cork, linoleum, or other suitable substance, and the lining covered with clean white paper pasted over it. Many different kinds of store boxes are used by entomologists who cannot afford the luxury of cabinets; most of them are made of deal, with hinges in the centre; the two sides of the box fold together, fitting closely over a rim along the inner edge of one half; and they are fastened with two hooks on the outside. These English boxes made of light pine can be obtained in Sydney; they fit beautifully and are much lighter than the local ones made of kauri, but are slightly dearer. To make a useful store box, nail down the lid of a large-sized cigar box (cleaning, sandpapering, and varnishing it); cut the box through the centre with a fine saw, and then fit a projecting rim into one half with wood from another cigar box, so that the two halves fit close together over the rim without needing catches. This is handy only for a temporary store box, as it is rather difficult to get the two halves to fit accurately, and when made is rather small and deep.

Specimens should be pinned or mounted on cards on a uniform plan; nothing looks worse than insects mounted in different styles. Except the smaller specimens, beetles and other insects should be pinned, and the most serviceable pins are perhaps Kirby, Beard and Co.’s Nos. 1 and 5, though there are several useful intermediate sizes. When an insect is too delicate to pin with either of these, mount it on card, for more insects are lost or damaged through mounting with slender pins that refuse to stick into the cork, and curl up or buckle in the middle, than in any other manner. There are however many professional naturalists who always use the soft, slender, very fine, Continental pins, but they require very delicate handling, and are not suitable for the general collector. There is a great difference of opinion as to how insects should be set and pinned; many, particularly English naturalists, advocate low setting, while most of our collectors set all insects high, as the insects when thus pinned are raised well above the bottom of the box, and their legs and antennae are not so liable to get broken; all mites, dust and dirt will be noticed at once; and the name affixed beneath can be read without removing the insect. In the case of low setting, the insects are resting on the floor of the box; they are liable to damage with the least bump; anthrenus and mites can feed away under cover without being seen until the remains of the infested specimen fall apart; the insect has to be lifted up every time to see its name; while the locality and date-label is always liable to fall off. My standard height (first suggested to me by Mr. Masters to use when working in the Macleay Museum, Sydney) is the lid of a wax matchbox, which is about ¾ of an inch. A small hole is pierced through the centre of the lid; the beetle is placed on the top of the lid, and the pin pressed through it and the hole in the lid until the point touches the table beneath. The pin, in the case of a beetle, should be pushed through the upper half of the elytron (wing cover) on the right-hand side when the head is facing the same way as the person mounting, the pin coming out on the under surface between the middle and hind legs. The antennae and legs may be arranged with pins, but, during the season in Australia, insects are so plentiful that there is not always time to more than roughly open them out.

In the case of insects too small to pin, they are carded. Sheets of the best white cardboard (little thicker than that of a visiting card) are cut into neat strips of uniform width and length for different specimens. No. 1 pins are run through the cards at one end to bring the under side of the card the same height up the pin as the under surface of the directly pinned insect. To give the little card mounts a finished appearance the card used in my collections is ruled with a double line of red ink, the first thick and the inner line fine; each strip of card is cut along the thick red line, and the pin is pushed through the red band. Where one has more than a single specimen, two or more can be mounted side by side on the same card, with their legs and antennae neatly set out, one with the dorsal surface uppermost, and the second one gummed with the reverse side upward, so that the specific characters of both sides of the insect can be examined without having to remove the specimen from the card.

Moths, butterflies, cicadas, lace-wings and other large winged insects when fresh, or after they have been relaxed, are pinned down on setting boards; the body should rest in the parallel groove down the centre of the board, and the wings should be opened out and strapped down on either side with braces of paper or cardboard. The wings should be expanded in a natural manner, and so that the whole of the venation and beauty of the wings are shown. A setting board is simply a strip of soft pine wood with two sheets of cork gummed on the upper surface, with a groove between them to receive the body; fine white paper is pasted over the whole of the board. They are made of various sizes to suit both large and small moths. Most of the old setting boards had the cork rounded so that the wings drooped downwards; afterwards many used them with the outer side turning upward so that the wings were raised at the extremities; those in general use now are perfectly flat.

All these insects are easily relaxed by placing them between damp blotting paper on the top of some wet sand in a plate, and covering them over with a bell glass or similar vessel; within twenty-four hours they are limp enough to be pinned and their wings opened out without any danger.

Numbering and Labelling.—Every specimen, as soon as it is mounted, should have a small label attached to the pin; this can be written with a fine-pointed pen on small slips of paper as distinctly as possible, with the exact locality in which the insect was collected, the date of capture, the name or initials of the collector, and the food plant when known. It is however sometimes better to pin a second slip below for the food plant and a distinctive catalogue number. Every young naturalist starting a collection should have consecutive numbers on each series of specimens he collects, and keep a note-book or stock register, in which to enter any information about the insect bearing the number. These notes in the course of time will become more and more valuable, and give an added value to the collection. Many young naturalists may think of labels only as a record of the collector’s name, but the locality and food plant are the important points, and to the working entomologist a collection of Australian insects without any such records have lost half their value. The label is placed on the top of the matchbox lid, and the pin bearing the specimen is pushed through to bring the label about halfway between the specimen and the point of the pin, which allows of the label being easily read, and when uniformly placed adds to the neat appearance of the collection. I have mentioned a matchbox lid as a standard height for mounting specimens, but when constantly at work something more solid is required. Take a small block of soft deal wood about 4 inches in length by 2 in width, and just under ¾ of an inch in height; bore two or three holes through it at one end, tack a sheet of white cardboard over the top, and above this at one end tack a slip of cork 1½ inches in width; then make holes through the cardboard above the holes bored in the deal block, and you have an excellent mounting table to work upon.

An entomologist does not require much apparatus after his boxes and setting boards, but one indispensable article is a pair of strong entomological forceps with curved tips; the curved extremities allow of the pin being gripped below the insect when fixing it in or lifting it out of the box. These in the hands of an expert are as good as an extra pair of fingers, both for moving about specimens and picking up pins. A second fine-pointed pair of forceps is useful for handling specimens when mounting, or for picking up small active insects under logs and stones. Two needles mounted in pen handles are invaluable for arranging the legs and antennae when being set. Fine-pointed paint brushes for cleaning dust and dirt from the insects are used; and a pair of pointed scissors are necessary for opening the large-bodied insects, cutting mounting cards, labels and such-like. A pocket lens should be always at hand, for without it one loses half the beauty and details of structure, and it would often be difficult to classify the specimens. Later on, the entomologist will find a dissecting microscope, which leaves both hands free to work, an indispensable part of his outfit. A bottle of gum is another requisite, and different recipes are given in manuals on the subject; at one time a mixture of tragacanth gum was generally used, but the great objection to its use is that, though very fine and transparent, it is very difficult to remove from the specimen when necessary to remount or to detach it for examination. The mixture now generally used is made of clean lumps of gum arabic dissolved in water to the consistency of thin honey, with a little ground lump sugar added; a few drops of carbolic acid are added, which, though apt to discolour it if much is used, will keep the mixture sweet, and prevents mould getting on the specimens. The gum should always be kept corked to prevent dust being introduced, which would show very readily on the mount.

Care of Collections.—After the collections are formed, the insects pinned, labelled, and placed in their natural groups, one’s work is by no means finished; thousands of valuable specimens, and even types, have been irretrievably damaged or completely destroyed from want of a little care in preserving them from mites and museum beetles (Anthrenus). The specimens may be perfectly clean and stored in close-fitting boxes, and yet later may become infested, by the addition of specimens that have been in an infested collection. It is advisable to keep a receiving box in which to place exchanged specimens for some time before setting out in the collections; as a general rule a collector eagerly adds any new specimen to his collections, and so at the same time may introduce Anthrenus, often in the egg state, whose little hairy larvae will rapidly destroy his insects. Some collectors contend that they can preserve their specimens from the attacks of museum pests by dipping them in a very weak solution of corrosive sublimate in spirits of wine; but this can only be effectively done in the case of beetles and other hard-bodied creatures, for it must be remembered that this chemical is apt to affect the metallic and bright-coloured tints of the specimens, and will even corrode the pins. Camphor and napthaline kept in a muslin bag or cell in the corner of the insect box will poison the air and certainly kill all mites, and will keep some pests out; but Anthrenus are able to live in this poisoned atmosphere, and will still carry on the work of destruction. Having once found Anthrenus among the specimens, no time should be lost before destroying them: a wad of cotton wool should be pinned in the corner of the box, and chloroform or bisulphide of carbon poured over it, and the box kept closed for about twenty-four hours, when it should be again opened, all dead Anthrenus shaken out, the remains of damaged insects removed, and the most injured specimens (if common) burnt. Another method when Anthrenus are found is, to hold the open box or drawer in front of the fire for a few moments, when the pests, even if feeding within the insects, will wriggle out and can be destroyed. When once a box has been infested it will require constant attention for months after.

Mould is also difficult to get rid of when once it appears in a box. If all insects are well dried before they are placed in the boxes, and the boxes kept in a dry place, there should be no mould among the contents, but if a few damp or mould-infested insects be placed in a clean box the mould may spread and eventually affect the whole collection, especially if the room is inclined to be damp. When mould appears, the affected insects should be cleaned with a brush dipped in benzine, and a few drops of carbolic acid should be poured on a piece of cotton wool in the box.

Grease is often a great trouble to the collector. Many of the large wood-moths, particularly the bodies, sometimes get into a very bad state if not cleaned out thoroughly; and also on old specimens of beetles the grease develops verdigris, corroding the pins. Soaking all such specimens in benzine will soften the grease so that it can be rubbed off with a soft brush.