JOUBNAL 



OF THE 



PtOYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



DECEMBER, 1917. 



TEANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



IX. — Some Methods of Preserving Marine Biological Specimens. 

 By F. Martin Duncan, F.E.M.S. F.E.P.S. 



{Read October 17, 1917.) 



The chief object of my present communication is to place on 

 rcicord those methods of preserving and preparing for microscopical 

 examination marine forms of plant and animal life which have 

 proved, during a period of some twenty-five years of intermittent 

 investigations in Marine Biology, most practical and successful. 

 While I do not claim for these methods any great novelty, they 

 have been selected from many with which I have experimented, 

 and represent those which have stood the test of practical appli- 

 cation ; and it is in the hope that these may be of some help to 

 other workers, may perhaps save new students in this interesting 

 field of research some of the difficulties and disappointments which 

 untried formulae are apt to present, that I now bring these results 

 before you. 



Marine Biology, the study of the teeming life of the sea, is one 

 of the most deeply fascinating branches of natural science, and one 

 which appeals particularly to the microscopist, for it is only by the 

 right use of his beloved instrument that the beauty of form and 

 the various stages in the complex and often romantic life-histories 

 of many of these denizens of the deep stand revealed. It is a 

 branch of scientific research calling for a far wider recognition and 

 support than it has hitherto received in this country, inasmuch that 

 it has a most important bearing upon the successful development 

 of our fisheries, and the continued gathering of that " harvest of the 

 deep " which should form such an all-important food supply to 



Dec. 19th, 1917 2 n 



