Practical Taxidermy Part 32

Later on, the blossoms of lime trees, flowers of the honeysuckle, bramble, petunias, scabious, and a host of others. Nettle beds also are great hunting localities at this time of the evening for many moths. Dark and sheltered hedgerows of lanes, fields of mowing gra.s.s, willows near water, heather, the seash.o.r.e, all add their quota to the persevering entomologist. The sallow blooms (commonly called "palm"), both male and female, must be searched early in spring time for the whole of the genus Taeniocampa and many other newly-emerged or hybernated species. As they usually drop at the first contact of the light from the lantern, the net must be held under them, or a sheet may be spread under the bush, and those which do not fall at first may be shaken off the blooms with a smart stroke or two of a stick. If the bushes are not high, "hand-picking" with the net held in readiness is really the best.

Ivy blooms in the autumn are also sure finds, several species--many of great rarity--being taken off this plant at night. Owing to the usual localities in which ivy is found, the spread sheet and subsequent "beating" come in more often than the safer method of "netting" and "bottling."

Light is also a great attraction to many moths, some of our greatest rarities being captured frequently, inside or outside street lamps, and the spectacle is by no means rare to see a "grave and reverend signor" climbing up the lamp-posts at a most unseemly hour of the night in search of specimens. Lighthouses have also yielded important captures, and there are worse things than being on friendly terms with the cleaner of street lamps, or the keeper of a lighthouse. True, you will get some awful rubbish, but the day will come when Alniaria or Celerio (which latter I once received alive), or some other rarity, will reward your faith. Light surfaces, such as white cloths or sheets left out all night, sometimes attract moths.

SUGARING.--The great nostrum for capturing moths is--"Sugar!" A legend tells that many years ago someone discovered (or imagined) that moths came to an empty sugar cask, situate somewhere in a now-unknown land; and acting as the Chinaman is said to have done, in re the roast pork--thought perhaps that the virtue 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:

Coa.r.s.e brown sugar (foots), 1 lb.

Porter (or ale), 1 gill.

Treacle (common), 0.25 lb.

Rum, a winegla.s.sful 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 subst.i.tuted 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 Warwicks.h.i.+re, 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"--(Do the moths fly high to the light?)--but I once had a grand capture of many specimens of the "sword-gra.s.s" (C. exoleta) on a bright moonlight and very windy night in February; and Dr. Knaggs says that on one occasion he met with night-flying moths literally swarming on a sugared fence in a field once in his possession, whither, in the small hours, he had taken a stroll with a friend on the brightest moonlight morning it was ever his lot to behold.

Many nights which appear the most favourable will, on the contrary, be unaccountably disappointing; not a single moth will make its appearance. The presence of ground-fog, "honeydew," more attractive flowers, or a coming change of wind or temperature (nothing caring to stir in an east, north, or northeast wind) will sometimes account for this.

"Showers, rain, thunderstorms, provided they are accompanied by warmth, are," says Dr. Knaggs, "very favourable, and the catch during these conditions of the atmosphere will generally repay the inconvenience of a wet jacket. On one terrible night, when the lightning was perfectly terrific, almost blinding even, though my companion's eyes and mine were kept upon our work, an incredible profusion of moths of various kinds were hustling one another for a seat at the festive board, and continued thus to employ themselves until a deluge of rain swept both sweets and moths away from their positions. On another stormy night, I well remember having counted no less than a hundred and fifty moths of several sorts and sizes struggling for the possession of two small patches of sugar. Perhaps the best condition of the air may be described as cloudy overhead, but clear and free from ground-fog near the earth; and when this state of things has been preceded by sultry weather, and a steady west, south, or south-west wind is blowing at the time, the collector need not fear the result, for he can hardly fail to be successful."

July is usually one of the very best months for sugaring, and, if warm, what can be more charming than to select a fine night at this season of the year and to spend it in the woods?

Just before dusk get your sugar painted on the trees, at about the height of your chest, in long narrow strips, taking care not to let any fall at the foot of the tree or amongst the adjacent bushes (though I have sometimes done very well by sugaring low down near the foot of the tree). Just as the nightjars and bats begin to fly you will have finished the last tree of your round, and rapidly retracing your steps to the first you will perhaps see a small moth, with wings raised, rapidly flitting up and down your patch of sugar. This is most probably the "Buff Arches," usually first to come; in fact, during the summer months, it is perhaps as well to get the sugar on at eight o'clock, as I have known this species, the "Peach Blossom" and the "Crimson Underwings" (Catocala promissa and sponsa), to come on the sugar in bright light while yet the last rays of the sun were lighting the westward side of the tree-trunk, when all the rest lay in shadow.

Fig. 52--Impaler.

If you are not facile princeps at "bottling," do not attempt it with the three or four species named above, but strike them with the net o at nce, for they are the most skittish of noctuae, especially in the early part of the evening. Striking down such insects with a parchment-covered battledore, which Dr. Guard Knaggs considers inflicts the least injury, or impaling them with a triangle of needles stuck in cork, in the manner shown in Fig. 52, or even with a single darning needle, has been recommended, but after a trial I have come to the conclusion that such plans are clumsy in the extreme.

A little practice will enable the beginner to dispense even with the net, which tends to "rub" such das.h.i.+ng or unquiet insects, and to rapidly cover them with a large cyanide bottle, or, failing this, with the instrument shown in Fig. 53, which is a combination of the "drum"

and cyanide bottle, and will be found very useful for skittish insects. A, represents a cyanide bottle with no neck--a wine or ginger-beer bottle cut down, by filing it around, and then tapping it smartly, does very well on an emergency.

Fig. 53--Diaphragm bottle.

On this is fixed a tin cylinder, B, having a slot cut in at D, in which a diaphragm, C, works, and is prevented from falling out by a stud fixed to its inside, and from falling inside by the stud above C.

To use this, the bottom must be stopped with a cork, through which a piece of stout wire is bolted, the wire to come up to, but just underneath, the slot D, allowing the diaphragm to close. In action this machine is worked thus: Supposing an insect is seen resting on a flat surface, such as palings, a wall, or the trunk of a tree, you having previously removed the cork and pulled the diaphragm out of the slot to its full extent, take aim, as it were, at the insect with the open mouth of B, and rapidly cover him with it. The moth, or what not, as a matter of course, flies toward the light which is at the bottom of the bottle, A; directly it has done so you push in the diaphragm, which of course effectually bottles him up. Now enter the cork in the mouth, B, and pull out the diaphragm again to allow the cork to pa.s.s to its place in the mouth of the cyanide bottle, which stopping is of course fatal to the insect.

Fig. 54--Sugaring drum.

The "sugaring drum" referred to is thus described and figured by Dr.

-Knaggs; and it will be seen that in its main principle it is similar to my diaphragm bottle, sans cyanide:

"This is a hollow metal tube of two or three inches diameter, over one end of which a piece of gauze has been strained, while at the other end a valve, to open and shut the mouth, works in a transverse slit (shown in Fig. 54). To use it we open the valve and deftly place the mouth of the drum over the insect which, in nineteen cases out of twenty, flies towards the gauze. We then seize the opportunity to close the valve, and pus.h.i.+ng the corked piston represented at the right side of the figure against it, once more open the valve, and force the capture up to the gauze, through which it may be pinned, and the piston should then be withdrawn with the insect stuck upon it."

After all, I like nothing so well as working two or three large cyanide bottles in this manner: Get some 6 oz. or 8 oz. bottles, with as large mouths as possible--a confectioner's small and strong gla.s.s jar is about as good a thing as you can get. To this have a cork, cut as tightly as possible, sloping outwards above the bottle some little distance, to afford a good grip. Fill with cyanide as before directed, putting in enough to make the bottles work quickly. When you see one of the restless hovering kind of insects at your sugar, aim at him stealthily, as it were, with the mouth of your bottle, and when near enough rapidly close the mouth over him--ten to one he flies to the light, and with a little management you can contrive to get the bottle recorked. Let him remain in the bottle until stupefied, meanwhile using another bottle. When this is tenanted and the insect drops, gently shake him into the first bottle, using the last to capture the next insect, and so on. By using three bottles you can always have one disengaged, and the bottled insects can thus be allowed to remain a sufficient time to go dead before pinning.

Many insects sit very quietly at the sugar, but some few have a nasty trick of "dropping" at the least alarm; to prevent this, the whipcord of the net (Fig. 43 or Fig. 46), should be always pressed close to the tree to receive them. The cyanide bottle should be held with the left hand, and the insect gently "flicked" in with a disengaged finger, the cork held in the right hand to close the bottle as quickly as possible.

My readers will say, How is the necessary lantern held all this time?

Between the teeth by a piece of wood, or leather, fixed round the top or swinging handle; or by being strapped on the chest at the height of the sugar patch. This is, of course, on the a.s.sumption that you work solus--not too pleasant if in a lonely wood for three or four days and nights. Unless you are greedy, therefore, and wish to make a regular trade of your loneliness, you will find that a friend, holding the lantern or net while you "bottle," is not by any means prohibitory to enjoyable collecting. Two working together can get over more ground than one, and what one friend misses, the other stops.

From dusk to eleven on a favourable night in the summer months the fun is fast and furious; thousands of moths of the common sorts come and go; now and then a "good thing" to sweeten the toil. The "Peach Blossoms" and "Buff Arches" slacken at about half-past nine, and do not reappear until exactly the same light reappears in the morning, going on well into the daylight. In fact, I have taken them still coming to the sugar as late as a quarter past three, when the first rays of the sun were just appearing.

This is one of the most curious things about sugaring. The swarming of one species at a certain hour of the night, their almost total disappearance, and their replacement by moths of quite a different genus, giving way again to others; then comes a lull--remarked by everyone--between half-past eleven and one or half-past, then a rush again up to daylight, when they all disappear, save one or two, who remain until they tumble dead drunk off the tree--a shocking example to the wood fairies, who are popularly supposed to draw the line at rum!

Another curious thing is that you may sugar in a wood for years and will always find certain trees unprofitable. I remember one tree in a favourite wood, which tree I sugared for years without taking a single moth from it. You can a.s.sign no reason for this, as the unproductive tree may be precisely similar to others on which insects swarm. As a rule, however, rough-barked trees are the best; and smooth, or dead or rotten ones, the worst. Still there is no hard-and-fast line in this.

Failing trees on which to put your sugar, paint palings, walls, bushes, leaves of plants, and even flower heads: or, if working on the seash.o.r.e, on which several rare and local species are found, "sugar"

flat stones, rocks, or even make bundles of the mat weed, as you will have to do on the "denes" of Norfolk or similar places, and sugar them. If you are entirely at a loss for bushes or gra.s.ses, soak some pieces of cloth or calico, before leaving home, in the sugar, and peg them down on the ground, or stick them in the crevices of the rocks, if the latter are, from any cause, too wet to hold the sugar.

It often happens that moths will come to sugar, even when not freshly painted on the trees. I remember once taking several Crimson Underwings (C. promissa), and several other things, on sugar which was painted on the trees by a collector four nights before I arrived at the spot. b.u.t.terflies and several other things are often attracted by sugared trees, whether old or fresh; and Dr. Knaggs says that by day several b.u.t.terflies, chiefly Vanessidae, a group comprising the "Peac.o.c.k," the "Tortoisesh.e.l.l," the "Red Admiral," the "Painted Lady,"

and the "Camberwell Beauty," have a penchant for the sugar, and may, by this means, be enticed within our reach; and the "Purple Emperor"

has thus been frequently entrapped.

Sugaring constantly in the same tract of woodland is certain ultimately to yield something out of the common, for moths have been proved to fly many miles in search of natural or artificial sweets, and even a barren locality may be made exceedingly productive by perseveringly sugaring it.

Some very curious things come to sugar now and then. Such insects as beetles, woodlice, slugs, etc, are expected as a matter of course, but toads, dormice, and bats--all attracted, however, I suspect, as much by the insects as the sugar--you do not expect, nor the sundry caterpillars which you occasionally can catch sipping at the sweet juice. The Hawk moths and Bombyces are popularly supposed not to come, but I have a distinct recollection of catching, near Woolwich, many years ago, a "goat moth" certainly "inspecting" the sugar, and a.n.a.logous but isolated instances now and then occur.

In the grey of the morning, when sugaring is finished, it will be as well to keep your eye on the hedgerows or heaths you may pa.s.s, as occasionally certain insects swarm at an early hour, and now and then important captures may be made.

Before dismissing the subject of sugaring, it may be as well to say a few words on lanterns and chip boxes. With regard to the first, bull's eyes are generally recommended. Possibly, I may be prejudiced against them when I say that I think they concentrate the glare of light too suddenly and in too narrow a focus, causing thereby many insects to drop, which the broader stream of light from an ordinary lantern does not appear to do to such an extent.

I recommend, therefore, a medium-sized ordinary lantern, about 7 in.

high by 4.5 in. by 3.5 in back to front, fitted with a double-wicked reservoir, holding sufficient oil to burn seven or eight hours. A screw cap should be fitted over the burners to prevent the oil running out and spoiling everything with which the lantern may be packed when travelling. The usual plate gla.s.s door should be made to open from the front, the gla.s.s sides, however, being replaced with bright metal, converging the rays from a strong reflector at the back; a swing handle should be fixed at the top and two at the back, all folding close to the lantern when not in use.

Plenty of ventilation, without allowing actual wind to penetrate, should be provided, and only the best colza oil be used. If made to order, a great advantage will be found in having the right-hand side to open outwards (from the back) instead of opening on the front, as the lantern can then be more easily trimmed when strapped on the body without the necessity of its removal for that purpose.

The chip boxes, which some entomologists use instead of the cyanide bottle to take the moths off the trees, are simply the various sized ointment boxes of the druggist, strengthened by papering, or by pieces of glued linen crossing them. Many use them, chiefly those of the old school, in preference to anything else--De gustibus, etc.

The objections to a general use of these boxes are many. First, you must provide yourself with a large bagful or pocketful of these boxes on starting out, as one moth only goes in each box, leaving one pocket empty on the reverse side of your coat to receive the boxes when filled, in order not to mix the empty with the full ones. Second, you are not quite sure at night as to "rubbed" or "chipped" 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 pa.s.s the time of their captivity in madly das.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s, 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!

a.s.sEMBLING--I had almost forgotten to mention another extraordinary way of catching moths (chiefly Bombyces), by what is called "a.s.sembling," 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.