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THE insect population in herbage, for example, in rough grassland, is commonly sampled by sweeping. Other arthropods such as mites, centipedes, millipedes and also slugs and snails are obtained by trapping, hand-picking, or by removing part of the habitat for extraction in the laboratory. We have developed a new, more universal method, liable to less personal error than sweeping, which extracts a very high proportion of small invertebrates from rough matted grassland with a suction pump. There is no need to remove a part of the habitat, and the method could be applied widely.