The Butterfly Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Butterflies of North AmericaHolland, W. J. (William Jacob)
Science
The Butterfly Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Butterflies of North America
Holland, W. J. (William Jacob)
Butterflies -- North America
Many other baits besides this may be employed to attract insects. Some
writers recommend a bait prepared by boiling dried apples and mashing
them into a pulp, adding a little rum to the mixture, and applying this
to the bark of trees. In tropical countries bananas, especially rotten
bananas, seem to have a charm for insects. The cane-trash at sugar-mills
is very attractive. If possible, it is well to obtain a quantity of this
trash and scatter it along forest paths. Some insects have very peculiar
appetites and are attracted by things loathsome. The ordure of
carnivorous animals seems to have a special charm for some of the most
magnificently colored and the rarest of tropical butterflies. A friend
of mine in Africa, who collected for me for a number of years, used to
keep civet-cats, the ordure of which was collected and placed at
appropriate points in the forest paths; and he was richly rewarded by
obtaining many insects which were not obtained in any other way. Putrid
fish have a charm for other species, and dead snakes, when rankly high,
will attract still others. It may be observed that after the trees have
been treated for a succession of days or nights with the sweetening
mixture spoken of above, they become very productive. When collecting in
Japan I made it a rule to return in the morning to the spots that I had
sugared for moths the evening before, and I was always amply repaid by
finding multitudes of butterflies and even a good many day-flying moths
seated upon the mossy bark, feasting upon the remnants of the banquet I
had provided the evening before. There is no sport--I do not except that
of the angler--which is more fascinating than the sport derived by an
enthusiastic entomologist from the practice of "sugaring." It is well,
however, to know always where your path leads, and not to lay it out in
the dusk, as the writer once did when staying at a well-known summer
resort in Virginia. The path which he had chosen as the scene of
operations was unfortunately laid, all unknown to himself, just in the
rear of the poultry-house of a man who sold chickens to the hotel; and
when he saw the dark lantern mysteriously moving about, he concluded
that some one with designs upon his hens was hidden in the woods, and
opened fire with a seven-shooter, thus coming very near to terminating
abruptly the career of an ardent entomologist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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