relaxing jar

[Kenelm Philip]

> Can anyone recommend a good technique for relaxing butterfly specimens.

In my experience, most problems with relaxing arise from layering specimens
in the relaxer, which may have a rather small cross-section. The essential
thing is to have a large surface area of water, and then a single layer of
well-separated specimens. Such a setup will relax small to average-sized
butterflies (up to _Colias_ and _Speyeria_, for example) in no more than
a day and a half. Lycaenids are relaxed within a day. Rapid relaxing reduces
the time during which mold can grow.

	The setup I have been using for many years now is the following:

A 12 by 18 inch (3-inch deep) Pyrex baking dish with a 1/4 inch plate glass
lid. The lid has four holes drilled in it, and two wooden handles are
attached on the top. A tight seal between the lid and the upper edge of
the Pyrex dish was made by running a bead of silicone caulk along the top
of the edge of the dish, coating the bottom of the plate glass above that
bead with Vaseline, and lowering the lid onto the caulk--and leaving it
there for a long time (preferably a month) until the caulk had cured. Then
remove the lid and clean up the Vaseline--and you'll have a good seal when
the lid is placed on the dish

The dish is then filled with about an inch of clean sand, and the sand is
saturated with water. I then made a frame out of 3/4" thick wood, which 
just fits in the dish on top of the sand, and stapled fiberglass screen
tightly across the frame. Some PDB is placed on the sand under the screen
to retard the growth of mold. I usually place 5x8" file cards over the
screen, and then place butterflies in their glassine envelopes on the
cards without overlapping the envelopes. After say 8 hours I take the
specimens out of the envelopes (they are no longer so brittle that this
is a problem) and place them on top of their envelopes (so as not to
get the data on the envelopes mixed up) for the remainder of the day to
day-and-a-half needed to relax the specimens.

	The large area of water, and the good circulation within the
relaxer, result in reliable fast relaxing. Mold is no problem.

	This may seem like a lot of trouble to go through for relaxing,
but the setup has to be made only once. When one is spreading tens of
thousands of specimens, anything that speeds relaxing and makes the
specimens come out of the relaxer in good shape is worth it. And even
for smaller jobs such a setup makes life easier... A smaller dish with
a similar setup would be fine for small occasional relaxing jobs, as
long as you maintain the single non-overlapping layer of specimens.

	I have run into a few problems with material sent to me from
other collectors, which require extra time in the relaxer. I have no idea
what is involved here. Maybe the fact that I use ethyl acetate as a kil-
ling agent is relevant. My own papered material, even when over 30 years
old, relaxes within the times mentioned above. The indoor climate here
in Fairbanks is _very_ dry (at least in the winter), so the papered
specimens are dry, and have been kept dry. Any chemicals which denature
proteins will, of course, make specimens difficult (or impossible?) to
relax--so don't allow anything like formaldehyde near papered material.

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu