MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 491 



always my first test for the colour — keeping properties of my preservative. I 

 found these little fish became semi-transparent and as hard as glass, and that 

 their colours seemed as if they were burnt in. My health having broken down I 

 was obliged to leave for England for a year, but I left behind me two rows of 

 fish prepared in this way, one mounted in kerosine, the other in glycerine, with 

 strict orders that they should not be touched till my return. I found twelve 

 months afterwards that the row in kerosine had broken up; but those in glycerine 

 were as perfect as the day I left. Specimen A, is one of them, mounted in October, 

 1884. It is exactly the same as the day it was put up. The first trouble was the 

 enormous expense of the process. HoAvever I overcome this to a certain extent 

 by filling up the bottles with lead vessels painted white. You will see that all 

 the fish bottles are furnished with a lead or tin vessel. This saved glycerine; but 

 it was the gum that was so costly, on account of the troubles in the Soudan. 

 To economize as much as possible, the fish were first dehydrated in spirit, so 

 that the gum and glycerine could be used over and over again. B is another 

 specimen of a very beautifully coloured wrasse. The spots ought to be emerald 

 green, and the bands on the head violet. I have no doubt they would be, but 

 I see by the label that it was not placed at once in pure glycerine, but seems to 

 have been experimented with, how I do not recollect. I suppose, seeing 

 the . colour fading, it was changed to pure glycerine, but too late to save the 

 more delicate tints. C is a star fish prepared by the same process some years 

 ago. But here the usefulness of this process ends. Only very scaly fish, such 

 as sea perches, and wrasses, and a few edimoderms can be prepared in this way. 

 Ordinary fish, snakes and frogs are withered up by it out of all recognition, and 

 rendered as hard as iron, Was there any possibility of rendering the specific 

 gravity of the gum and glycerine less ? This was a question to which I devoted 

 myself for a long time. No additions of watery solutions of any substances 

 were of any avail. At last I found that by gently mixing with weak spirit, 

 briskly stirring all the time, that the gum, at first precipitated in flocculent 

 mases< was redissolved, and that in that way solutions of almost any specific 

 gravity could be obtained. D is an extremely rare frog, presented by Mr. Green, 

 prepared and mounted in 1887 in gum and glycerine reduced by spirit to the 

 same specific gravity as milk. But it is only very small specimens that could 

 be mounted in this way, the medium being too opaque for any larger bottles, 

 nor is it a good mounting medium even for them. The specimen exhibited is in 

 a very soft state. I could not allow it to be handled, and hence it is useless for 

 scientific examination. The delicate violet tint of the large blotches on the back, 

 is, however, well preserved. If we attempt to mount specimens preserved in 

 this way in pure glycerine, they are shrivelled up quite as, or almost as, badly 

 as if preserved with the fidl strength of the gum and glycerine mixture. Many 

 attempts were made to reduce the specific gravity of the glycerine. It may 

 be asked why not have tried spirit ? The answer is that one of my very first 

 experiments in this Colony were mixtures of glycerine and spirit. They are most 



