[Illustration: FIG. 71.--Collecting Pill-box. _a_, glass bottom (original).] Collecting by the aid of strong light is a favorite means for moths as well as other insects, and nowadays the electric lights in all large cities furnish the best collecting places, and hundreds of species may be taken in almost any desired quantity. In woods or in other situations they may be attracted to a lantern or to a light placed in an open window. Various traps have been devised, which comprise a lamp with apparatus for retaining and stupefying the insects attracted to the light. The common form is made by providing a lantern with a strong reflector. Under the light a funnel several inches larger than the lantern reaches down into a box or bottle containing the fumes of chloroform, ether, or benzine. [Illustration: FIG. 72.--Method of holding and manipulating collecting pill-box in capturing (original).] Mr. Jerome McNeill describes at length and figures in the _American Naturalist_, Vol. XXIII, p. 268-270, an insect trap to be used in connection with electric lights. It consists of a tin pail or can charged with cyanide after the manner of a collecting bottle, which is attached beneath the globe of the electric light. The insects attracted by the light strike against a vertical tin screen fixed above the can and fall into a tin funnel the small end of which enters and closes the mouth of the can, and they are thus conducted into the last. A support or post in the center of the can bears a hollow tin cone, the apex of which is pierced with a number of small holes to admit light, and enters and partly closes the lower end of the funnel. The entire interior of the can is painted black and the chief light comes through the holes in the apex of the interior cone. The entrapped insects endeavor to escape by crawling up the central post towards the light coming through the small holes in the end of the cone rather than by the entrance slit about the latter and fall back repeatedly until overcome by the cyanide. Many of the Lepidoptera will be ruined by the beetles and other insects or by their own ineffectual attempts to escape, but Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Neuroptera, and Hemiptera are secured in satisfactory condition. Many of the devices are very complicated and can not be described in this connection. The nocturnal species, also, fly into our houses, and this is especially the case in the country, and an open window, with a strong light reflected onto a table covered with either a white paper or a white cloth will keep one busy, on favorable nights, in properly taking care of the specimens thus attracted.