The Beetle and Butterfly Collection - A Guide to Collecting, Arranging and Preserving Insects at Home

By Harland Coultas

“The Beetle and Butterfly Collection” is a classic guide to collecting, arranging, and preserving various insects at home. Written with the amateur in mind, it contains simple, step-by-step instructions that will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in insect collecting and preservation. Contents include: “Setting-Out and Maintaining Beatles and Butterflies”, “The Parts of a Beetle”, “The Classification”, “Lepidoptera, or Butterflies and Moths”, “Classification of Butterflies”, “The Lepidarium”, “The Outline Sketch of the Insect Orders”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in a new, affordable, modern edition complete with the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Country Books
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528767330

Book preview

SETTING-OUT AND MOUNTING BEETLES AND BUTTERFLIES.

WHEN it is intended to mount beetles, they should be taken out of the collecting bottle and placed on blotting-paper to dry.. A pin should be thrust down vertically through the right wing-cover, so that its point will come out between the second and third pair of legs, without breaking the joint. The insect should be placed two-thirds up the pin, a uniform height being preserved through the collection, so that all in the cabinet stand on the same level. Very small beetles, which the finest pin would divide, should be gummed to the point of a triangular piece of card, and the pin thrust through the broad part. The legs and antenna of larger insects must be spread out and properly arranged; for this purpose a slab of cork or turf will be found very useful. Sticking the pin in the slab so as to fix the insect, the organs of the mouth, where possible, the antennæ, and the feet should be set out with smaller pins in natural positions, and then left to dry. If a cake of turf be used, pieces of wood may be nailed on behind to give it greater firmness and solidity.

Mounted Beetles.

Slabs for Mounting.

Some of the greater beetles, such as the common cockchafer (Melolontha vulgaris), may be spread out like butterflies in a flying position, not only their elytra or wing-covers being expanded, but their true membranous wings displayed.

It sometimes becomes necessary to take away old pins and introduce new ones, or to spread out and display the limbs of insects after they have become stiffened and dried. Insects of all kinds may be relaxed, and their limbs rendered pliable and soft, by placing them in a moist sand bath overnight; in the morning it will be found that, by carefully turning the pins, they may be drawn out, and that the limbs, antennae, and other parts can be re-adjusted.

Cockchafer.

In setting out insects it is desirable to have on one board insects approximating to each other in size, and collected, if possible, on the same day, so that all may be treated alike. The setting-board for butterflies consists of soft linden or poplar wood, containing a deep semi-cylindrical longitudinal groove, tapering on either side, so as to be the better adapted to the body of the insect. This board slopes a little towards the groove, in order to elevate the wings. When the wood is not soft enough, strips of cork may be glued to its surface the groove being furrowed in the cork; or two boards may be united with cross-pieces of wood, and the opening between them filled up with turf. It is desirable at first to draw lines across the setting-board at right angles with the groove, in order thereby to extend the wings at exactly the same height.

Setting-boards for Butterflies.

The body of the butterfly must be pinned down in the groove in such a position that the upper edges of the groove are at the same height as the centre line of the body of the insect, so that the wings may lie flat upon the board. With a needle the wings should be drawn apart until the inner margin of the border wings forms a right angle with the long line of the body; the hinder wings will thereby be exposed and drawn after the fore-wings so far that they will be partly covered by the posterior part of the fore-wings, their hinder portion only being visible. The wings thus stretched out must be fixed firmly and held in position by strips of cardboard laid across them, which should be pinned down to the setting-board. The antennæ and the first pair of legs must be directed forward at an acute angle, the other pair of legs directed backwards. The abdomen of the larger species should be supported beneath by layers of paper or cotton wool.

If the upper and under surfaces of the wings are very different in their appearance and markings, there should be duplicate specimens, so that both surfaces may be displayed, as in the case of the beautiful argus (Polyommatus Argus): the upper side of the wings of which insect is blue, while the under side has many eyes, and a yellow border.

The butterflies, after they have been displayed on the setting-out board, must be laid aside to dry in a place free from dust, airy and warm, but in the shade. The small ones dry quickly, but large species sometimes take three or four weeks, or even a longer