During the summer between seventh and eighth grade, I decided to make an insect collection. I recruited my pal Charlie, and my uncle Hubert said he would help us because he had made two collections when he was a boy. Besides, he didn’t want us to handle the killing agent.
The first step in making the collection was to capture the insects. The two nets we used were in the shape of a cone and had a wire ring and a wooden handle attached. The bags were made of muslin, the handles were 3 feet long, and the wire rings were a foot in diameter.
In order to capture the insects, Hubert taught us how to sweep flowers and foliage using a sidewise motion. Then, after every few strokes, the insects were removed. We captured bees, wasps, butterflies, and even a few dragonflies.
The next step was to obtain a killing bottle. We settled on a food jar with a screw cap. The least dangerous killing agent was ethyl acetate, so Hubert saturated several pieces of gum rubber and placed them in the bottom of the bottle and covered the gum with a cotton plug.
When our specimens were to be mounted, we placed them in a tightly covered jar containing a layer of sand saturated with phenol. The insects rested on a piece of cardboard placed over the sand.
We mounted all of the insects that we caught. Medium-to-large insects were pinned through the body. The spring steel pin was inserted vertically through the middle of the insect, its position varied as to where the most solid part of the body was located.
Small insects were mounted on cardboard dabbed with glue, and the insect was pressed to the glue with care the top of the insect horizontal so that most of its body was not concealed.
Small labels were written giving the date when the insect was caught, and these labels were attached to specimen cards. The completed specimens were stuck in cork which lined the bottom of the collection box. The box was tight fitting and contained a small holder with insect repellant to prevent the entry of pests.
Some of the insects we collected and never mounted were preserved in vials of 80% alcohol. The vials were closed with a stopper and placed in a larger jar filled with this same solution. I gave these to Charlie, hoping that he would mount them, but this never happened because his mother threw the collection in the garbage.
Since Charlie and I were a couple of amateurs, it is amazing that we did not get stung by the bees and wasps, but Hubert taught us how to be careful by stroking quickly and not batting at stinging insects and spending as little time as possible at a collection site.
I kept the collection for 10 years, and then I gave it to Bill Jurgens, a biology teacher.