11. Storage boxes. Before pinning a lot of insects you must also provide storage boxes in which to place them as soon as they are mounted. Any kind of close-covered box will do, if the bottom is lined with a material soft and deep enough to receive insect pins and hold them. Museums, and a few private collectors, use large, glass-topped, cork-bottomed drawers which are kept in stacks. Wooden Schmitt boxes or cardboard storage boxes sold by supply houses are small enough to file in large library shelves. One of these appears in fig. 5. Very satisfactory, though somewhat small for Lepidoptera, are wooden cigar boxes, the kind having the top rabbeted to insure a tight closure. These may be lined with sheet cork, balsa wood, or two layers of corrugated cardboard placed at right angles to each other. The lining should be snug, and secured with glue to prevent it from being dislodged. A large number of these boxes, set on edge, can be accommodated in an ordinary bookshelf. LABELING Every properly pinned insect carries with it on the same pin one or more labels bearing the data relating to it. Whenever possible, these labels should be prepared in advance and placed on the pin at the same time as the specimen, thus reducing the chances of losing the information and the number of times each specimen must be handled. You might try counting or estimating the number of specimens of each date and locality when filling the relaxing box, and making the pin labels while the insects are softening. Pin labels are best made of a good quality of light card or stiff white paper cut into strips not over three quarters of an inch wide. They should be lettered in black ink with a fine pen and in the smallest space consistent with neatness and legibility. If they are written uniformly, one below the other, close to the left hand side of the strip, with a narrow space between them, the right hand edge of the whole strip can be trimmed in one operation and the labels separated by a minimum of snips. If your collecting has been very successful and you have hundreds of specimens with a single set of data, you might do as museums do and have the labels printed. If you collect in one place the year round, have the locality printed but leave on each label a space for the insertion of the date by hand. Four and one-half point type is of a size convenient to both collector and printer. The information carried by the pin label must always include the locality and date of capture, and, if known, the name of the collector. In learned institutions, whose collections are built up of many private collections, labels may also bear the name of the donor. Observations on the habits and habitats of the creatures, such as "altitude 1000 meters" or "feeding on leaves of Quercus alba" add greatly to the value of a collection and may also be written on pin labels. The technical name of a plant host should be used, if known, but the common name is much better than none. In order to conserve space in the storage boxes, pin labels are made as small as possible and should not project much beyond the specimen if it can be prevented. To this end, the data are abbreviated whenever this can be done without obscuring the meaning. Dates are often written as a series of numbers with dots between. The month is indicated by an unmistakable Roman numeral, to prevent confusion, since some collectors place the month first and some the day. Special care must be taken to distinguish between the Roman and Arabic "one," and between the Roman "two" and the Arabic "eleven." Thus, 1-II-42 is the first of February, nineteen forty-two, while I-11-42 is the eleventh of January. You may, of course, write out the date in full, if you prefer. When the identity of a specimen has been determined, its scientific name, or as much thereof as is known with certainty, may also be written on a label and placed upon the pin below the others. Several strips of pin labels appear in fig. 6. Fig. 6. Pin labels for insects, hand lettered and printed. PINNING With the insects properly relaxed, the labels and storage box ready, and the tools at hand, the mounting can begin. The specimens are removed from the relaxing box, not more than a few at a time, and the box closed immediately. A specimen is either held in the fingers or placed upon the pinning block, as its shape may indicate, and a pin of suitable size is passed through it from top to bottom at right angles to the length of the body. About half an inch of the pin should be left protruding above the back. In order to preserve the structure and pattern of at least half of the creature undamaged, the pin is inserted a little to the right of the middle line; and since most collectors are right handed, this facilitates all subsequent handling. 4