The night chosen should be warm and calm, with a rather damp atmosphere, and no moon preferred. Let your locality be a well-wooded one; abounding, if possible, with giant oaks and other trees, and containing open spaces with plenty of underwood and rank herbage. Such localities are to be met with at their best in forest lands, and if you would do wonders at sugaring you cannot do better than arrange for spending your holidays in such a spot as the New Forest, taking with you sufficient 'sugar' for several nights' work.
Having reached a likely spot of no very great extent, you prepare for real work. Light up the lamp, and get out your sugaring tin and brush ready for action. Take your course along some definite track that you are sure to remember, painting vertical strips of sugar, about a foot long, on the trunks of trees or on palings, and hanging strips of rag that have just been steeped in the sugar on the branches of small trees and shrubs where you do not find good surfaces for the brush.
After satisfying yourself concerning the amount of sugar distributed, retrace your steps, examining every patch of sugar as you go. It will not be long before signs of life appear. Earwigs, spiders, centipedes and slugs will soon search out the luscious feast, but unless the time and the locality are ill chosen, the lantern will soon reveal a goodly number of moths, with eyes glaring like little balls of fire, greedily devouring the bounteous repast. These will consist chiefly of Noctuæ, but Sphinges, Geometræ and numerous small species also join the company.
Some will exhibit a restless disposition, either darting off before you make a close approach, or keeping their wings in rapid vibration as if to be fully prepared for a hasty retreat when occasion demands. These must receive your attention first; and, having secured them, proceed to box as many as you require of the more lazy and gluttonous species.
As a rule, moths thus engaged are easily pill-boxed, but the livelier ones will not submit to such treatment without attempting to escape. The best way to secure these is either to cover them with the opened cyanide bottle (or its substitute), and replace the cork as soon as a favourable opportunity occurs; or to perform the same feat with a glass-bottomed pill box.
The advantage of the latter over the ordinary boxes will be
seen at once. After the insect is covered, its movements can be watched, and so a favourable opportunity can be seized for snapping on the lid.
As already stated, some moths feign death when in danger, allowing themselves to fall in places where they are often quite safe from capture. Others allow themselves to fall simply because they have so gorged themselves with the intoxicating sweet that they can no longer maintain their hold. Both these classes of sugar seekers may easily be secured by means of a net commonly known as the 'sugaring net.'
