Practical taxidermy : a manual of instruction to the amateur in collecting, preserving, and setting up natural history specimens of all kinds to which is added a chapter upon the pictorial arrangement of museums / by Montagu Browne.

  • Browne, Montagu.
Date:
[1884?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical taxidermy : a manual of instruction to the amateur in collecting, preserving, and setting up natural history specimens of all kinds to which is added a chapter upon the pictorial arrangement of museums / by Montagu Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    net just “ bed ” up level with the surface. The arms being nicely adjusted, remove the net temporarily from the stick. Next procure a piece of brass tube from 2in. to 2£in. long, and of sufficient diameter to slip from the point of the stick until it passes the last hole (a -fin. or fin. diameter will be found a generally suitable size). On the extreme point of the stick affix an ordinary walking-stick ferrule of such a size and thickness as not to allow the tube to slip off. To fix the net, slip the tube up the stick past the last hole, and placing the little cranks, B and 0, in their proper holes, the remainder of the arms properly “ bedded ” in the grooves, slide the tube D (Fig. 41) up to the point of the stick, as shown in Fig. 42, and the net is thus effectually locked and ready for use. I claim for this net the following advantages: That it is the most easily made, the strongest, and the most easily taken down of any net known; added to which its joint A, which does not in the least weaken the frame, allows it to be folded in half the space taken up by the “ ring net ” or the ordinary “ landing net” arrangement. (Note for fishermen : Landing nets, formed as Fig. 41, I have found very useful, as they take up less room in the fishing basket, and are quite as quickly put together as by the screw and socket arrangement.) Larger nets than are generally used in this country will of course be necessary when collecting such insects as form the genus Ornithoptera or Morplio. For collecting abroad no net will be found more serviceable than a large and strong one, made as Fig. 41; and really when you have five large papilios in your net at one time, as I once had, you require one a little out of the common. A short handle to the net will be found more useful than a long one for collecting some insects, but a brass telescopic handle can be easily made by any gasfitter, and used either long or short as expediency directs. The next figure shows apparently a more elaborate looking net. The only other one known to me which folds in four, folds by means of the rule joint, and is somewhat objectionable, inasmuch as it must either be made of unnecessarily thick and cumbersome wire, to stand the strain, or if made, as it should be, of the proper sized wire and of light construction, it is sure to break out at one or the other of the joints. Experience having