Other necessary equipments for the fly-catcher are two or three light wooden boxes, as large as can conveniently be carried in the pockets, and having either the bottom, or, if deep enough, both bottom and top lined with a layer of cork, about one-eighth of an inch in thickness.
A pin-cushion, well furnished with entomological pins, should also be carried, and will be found to be most accessible when suspended by a loop and button (or otherwise) inside the breast of the coat.
The pins here mentioned, which are an important item among butterfly-collecting requisites, are of a peculiar manufacture—very small-headed, long and thin, but strong. Any good London dealer will supply them on application, or send them by post into the country.
Armed with the above simple paraphernalia, viz. net to catch, boxes and pins to contain and detain, the insect hunter may sally forth on any fine summer's day, with a pretty sure prospect of sport, and the chance, at least, of a prize. Much depends, however, on the choice of a day, and the nature of the locality that is to form the hunting ground.
As to weather, it must be remembered that winged insects have a great objection to face a north, or north-east wind, during the prevalence of which you will probably find hardly one stirring, however prolific the locality may at other times be.
Butterflies, as a rule, do not appear to be at all
influenced by an eye for the picturesque and romantic in the choice of their favourite haunts. Often have I been disappointed in this way, finding a delicious spot, basking in sunshine, and bedight with all manner of flowers such as a butterfly loves, yet with scarcely a stray butterfly to enliven it; while, on the other hand, a piece of the most unpromising flat waste land will be all alive with insect beauty. Those, for example, who would see those splendid creatures, the Swallow-tail butterfly and the large Copper (if this exists with us at all now), must go to the dreary fen districts that form their almost exclusive haunts.
It is, in fact, very hard to say what influences bring a swarm of butterflies together, to populate one particular spot, to the utter neglect of others close at hand, and, to all appearance, just as eligible.
Some species are most remarkable for their excessive localness (as it is called), or, limiting their range to an exceedingly small circumscribed space; so much so, that some rare species have been known to haunt just one corner of one particular field, year after year, while not a single specimen could be found in all the neighbouring fields, though precisely similar, to all appearance. This phenomenon is quite inexplicable with regard to insects endowed so pre-eminently with locomotive powers as butterflies are.
The local nature of his game should, however, induce the collector to leave no nook or corner unexplored when he is "working" a district; as the passing over (or rather, neglecting to pass over) a single field may lose him the very species it would joy him most to find.