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Webster 1913 Edition

Noun.

[Cf.

(Zool.)

The practice of attracting the males of Lepidoptera or other insects by exposing the female confined in a cage.

☞ It is often adopted by collectors in order to procure specimens of rare species.

sembling ‎(uncountable)

(zoology) The practice of attracting the males of Lepidoptera or other insects by exposing the female confined in a cage (as by collectors wishing to procure specimens).
(Can we find and add a quotation of James William Tutt to this entry?)
- 1831, James Rennie, Insect Architecture
  Upon this is founded the practice of sembling, as it is called by the London collectors, among whom, as we learn from Barbut and Harris, it has been long in use, for entrapping the males of the fox-moth […]