Sometime around 1600 Thomas Mouffet, gazing through a magnifier with great excitement upon insects, became perhaps the first man in history truly to appreciate their private lives. In his Theatrum Insectorum, or Theater of Insects, he wrote with the enthusiasm of an approving first nighter viewing a new drama. On the stages of our microscopes, as well as beneath the hand lens of our own flea glass, we can recapture some of Mouffet’s spirited feeling by studying some of these real-life actors both dead and alive.

With some 675,000 known species of insects in the world, and more diversity among them than one’s wildest imaginings could conjure up, one is not likely to run out of subjects. Studying the strange, complex, intense lives of these actors will become as engrossing to you as studying them dead if you turn your full concentration upon them for a while.

There are many ways to obtain specimens. Take only what you are going to profit from, for there is no point in catching large numbers, particularly of such useful kinds as bees, merely for the sake of quantity. You will first need a jar in which to kill them as quickly and painlessly as possible. At school you may be instructed in the making of chloroform or cyanide Jar chloroform can be dangerous, and cyanide is a deadly poison requiring special handling.

There are several choices for making at home. First a wide-mouthed jar can be half filled with rubbing alcohol, and the insects except butterflies and moths immersed. Second a jar with a blotter cut to fit the bottom and moistened with household ammonia, carbon tetrachloride Carbona cleaning fluid or such insect spray as is used for cockroaches, with a soaked wad of cotton beneath the blotter, is another type, still better is a jar with a tight-fitting cork into the underside of which a plug of absorbent cotton is fitted, soaked with any of the above-mentioned fluids. A small refill bottle may need to be carried on a long field trip to replenish the cotton.

Insects are found just about everywhere flowers are a populous source, as well as leaves and tender stems look closely here at the microscope the insects can be shaken, scooped or trapped in the bottle. Nets can be made or purchased for sweeping through the air or among tall grasses and weeds. Around decaying wood, beneath moist leaves or on rotting branches or timbers are found many beetles, termites and others with the use of the microscope. Different lice are found in birds, sheep, horses, cattle and other animals, and the fleas in dog and other fur, particularly in late summer, are most fascinating. Look beneath tree bark and under stones and trash, on the surface of lakes and ponds and among bushes and twigs. Spreading a sheet or other white cloth or an upside-down, open umbrella beneath a plant, shrub or small tree and shaking the foliage will rain down a host of surprised insects. Remember that many are well camouflaged, some almost beyond belief in shape and color, blending with leaves, flowers, bark and the ground.

Day and night they have their own assemblages. Often great numbers of moths, being nocturnal, will congregate on the screen door or window of a lighted room or porch even in cities, although to less extent. The upturned globe of a lamp makes an excellent trap for many. Fruit set out in the summer will usually soon have galaxies of the scientifically important and fascinating fruit fly Drosophila nearby. Early springtime in the country or park fills the air with clouds of the bothersome midges tiny and elusive. Each season has its own crowds. There are even the little springtails on snow.

When ready to study and dissect your specimens, remember that the keynote of success here, especially, is orderliness. All your pillboxes, envelopes, small bottles or matchboxes should be integrated into your most workable system each labeled. Do one insect at a time and discard the parts or put them back into their labeled container. What is an insect? Its name goes partway toward a description, for each insect Latin, meaning cut into is divided into three parts head, thorax and abdomen, with three pairs of legs attached to the thorax. Insects are, in a sense, put together wrong side out as compared to higher animal groups. Their stiff, supporting shell-like structure, or exoskeleton, is on the outside, and muscles are attached to the inside of the exoskeleton. The soft organs, bathed in the usually colorless blood, which is free inside them and not carried in a closed system of vessels, are thus well protected inside.