NOTES ON COLLECTING “AT LIGHT.”

Extract

Until last year (1897), owing to the lack of suitable surroundings, I had made no attempt at systematic collecting “at light.” Now, as the result of this one season's capture, I am firmly convinced that this method of collecting is the very best way in which to make a large collection quickly and to secure in abundance species hitherto rarely met with or entirely new. For all night-flying species no other way of collecting has ever proved so profitable with me, and a short account of my experiences, with notes of some of the captures made, may be of interest. To begin with, this was my fourth collecting season in Manitoba, but until this year the good things taken at light were few and far between. Locality is everything, and my surroundings in previous years consisted of too much brick and mortar and too little of nature's clothing. At the end of May this year I moved to Fort Rouge, a surburb of Winnipeg, situated between the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Formerly the whole of this was “bush,” with some good timber along the river banks. I am, glad to say that a goodly portion of Fort Rouge is still “bush,” with here and there a little clearing, sufficient to allow of a residence or so; sometimes just enough only for the house, which when the trees are in full foliage may be completely shut in. Where I live the place is more settled, but still plenty of thick bush about, here and there, if only in small pieces. In June my yard (out of politeness perhaps it should be styled garden) was full of wild rose bushes, the flowers of which adorned our tables and perfumed our rooms for more than a month. The children stepped outside the back gate to pick flowers and wild strawberries; at the side of the house and along the roadway in front on both sides, white clover was everywhere in profusion, and the air was laden with the scent. And yet the roads is block-paved, and the electric cars pass along it, and a ride of eight minutes on my wheel will take me to my office in the heart of this city of 40,000 or more people.