490 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1891. 



not the slightest doubt about the success of carbolic acid, and expected at once 

 to be able to have a good show, easily and inexpensively prepared, of all our 

 reptiles and fish. My collection of English fish in London had been kept in a 

 covered zinc pail, in a solution of 1 in 400, and although the fish of northern 

 seas have, as a rule, so little colour that I had not gained much knowledge on 

 that point, there was no doubt about the preservation of the animals themselves. 

 I was very soon undeceived. A few experiments on the common fish and lizards 

 of the Cinnamon Gardens showed that solutions of carbolic acid in water 

 do not fit in Colombo as preservatives at all, whatever the strength employed. 

 Such an experience ought to have warned me not to cry before I was out of 

 the wood ; but in 1878 I reported a great success to Government by first employ- 

 ing alcohol for a short time, and then removing the specimens to a solution of 

 carbolic acid and nitrate of potassium. I may as well mention at this point 

 that any form of the substances known commonly as salts, whether as poisonous 

 as corrosive sublimate, or as harmless as alum, are all alike destructive in this 

 climate to any specimens prepared by them. One of the most extraordinary 

 instances of this was in a very fine skate most beautifully mounted for the 

 Museum by the American taxidermist, Mr. Hornaday. The skin had been 

 brought in brine from Jaffna, and soon after it was exhibited the fish began to 

 give trouble. It was carbolicised, it was varnished, it was dried in the sun, it 

 was painted ; but it slowly dissolved before our eyes, exactly as the Cheshire 

 cat did before Alice's, till nothing was 'left but its grin, represented by the 

 carious dental plates on my office table : but even these broke up at last. I need 

 scarcely say that whenever I saw any solutions described as being used by 

 other naturalists I tried them also — they were all alike absolute and complete 

 failures. The only approach to success was made by first pi'eparing the speci- 

 mens by arsenic paste, and then mounting in kerosine oil. This was, as we shall 

 presently see, what is called " burning " in the game of hide and seek. A row of 

 fish prepared in this way was exhibited, and preserved their form and colours 

 beautifully for about six months, until one morning I found them nearly all 

 broken up, and nothing left but a precipitate of muscle and bone at the bottom 

 of the bottles. I came unwillingly to the conclusion that there was no means 

 known, or likely to be discovered, that would preserve animals with a natural 

 look about them, and that I should have to content myself with ordinary 

 Museum spirit specimens. There was one branch of the animal kingdom, how- 

 ever, I had always been very anxious to make a good show of, and that was 

 spiders. I naturally looked to microscopical preparations to solve that question, 

 and amongst them tried an old and long abandoned one — gum and glycerine. 

 This had been given up because of the great difficulties experienced with the air 

 bubbles which formed so abundantly in it ; but that did not matter to me. There 

 was something about this mixture that strongly attracted my attention. Its 

 action was unlike anything I had seen before, and I tried our beautiful little 

 gold and red spotted fish in it, so abundant in the Colombo lake, and which are 



