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.
Energy Digest
The Butterfly Book — Part 28
2026-11-15 09:10:19 · Cedar Herald Index
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