If your field of operations is only a little way from your head quarters, and quantity of luggage therefore not a serious consideration, you may provide yourself with a heavy mallet, loaded if necessary with a pound or two of lead. This will prove very useful in shaking larvae from trees and large branches. Lastly, take a pencil and a note book or writing paper for your observations in the field. Now for the choice of the season. Larvae are to be found all the year round. Early in the spring, as soon as the buds are bursting, some break out of the eggs recently laid by the moths that appear in February and March. Later on, during April and May, a host of both butterflies and moths are busy arranging for their broods. Then, throughout the whole of the summer, thousands of caterpillars of all sorts and sizes are to be met with everywhere. And finally, during the bleak winter months, you may amuse yourself by digging the hybernators out of their hiding places where they rest themselves till the spring sun again calls them out to refresh them with the young and tender leaves of a new year. Thus, unless you are merely intending to search out certain species you happen to require, there is not much difficulty in settling on the season. The day selected should be dry, for your work lies among the herbage of banks, meadows, and woods, and nothing is more unpleasant than wading through a wet and dense vegetation, or beating down on yourself a shower of large drops from the branches of trees and shrubs. Having reached the hunting ground, the first thing to do is to look out for _signs_ of the presence of larvae rather than for the larvae themselves. Healthy vegetation with sound leaves must be passed by as untenanted; but the presence of partly eaten foliage immediately arouses suspicion. A little experience will soon enable you to distinguish between the ravages of larvae and of slugs, snails, wasps, &c. Some of the smaller larvae certainly eat out clean holes like those cut by _Hymenopterous_ insects, but as a rule they bite away at the edges, leaving the midrib and the larger veins standing out almost naked. By looking well into the edges of the eaten leaves, it is easy to see whether the marauders have been recently at work. If they are dried up and discoloured, it is not of much use to search; but if still green and moist, you may feel almost sure that the hungry larvae are not far off.