THE LARVÆ, OR CATERPILLARS.
The easiest way of destroying the Caterpillar is by immersion in spirit of wine. They may be retained for a long time in this spirits without destroying their color.
Mr. William Weatherhead had an ingenious mode of preserving Larvæ. He killed the Caterpillar, as above directed, and having made a small puncture in the tail, gently pressed out the contents of the abdomen, and then filled the skin with fine dry sand, and brought the animal to its natural circumference. It is then exposed to the air to dry, and it will have become quite hard in the course of a few hours, after which the sand may be shaken out at the small aperture and the Caterpillar then gummed to a piece of card.
Another method is, after the entrails are squeezed out, to insert into the aperture a glass tube which has been drawn to a very fine point. The operator must blow through this pipe while he keeps turning the skin slowly round over a charcoal fire; the skin soon becomes hardened, and, after being anointed with oil of spike and resin, it may be placed in a cabinet when dry. A small straw or pipe of grass may be substituted for the glass pipe.
Some persons inject them with colored wax after they are dried.