72 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



material. It need hardly be said that careful packing is an 

 indispensable necessity, and to this end the collector should not 

 only have ample supplies of cotton, tissue and wrapping paper, 

 but will find it useful to keep lumber in his camp and make his 

 boxes on the spot as he needs them. Usually the fossils must 

 be hauled long distances to the railroad, and they will carry 

 much better if boxed ready for shipment than in any other way. 



Having now gathered our fossils and brought them into the 

 museum, it remains to make them available for study; this is 

 the work of the museum preparator, and is often exceedingly 

 tedious and laborious, calling for a very high degree of both 

 skill and patience. In case the bones are hard and firm and 

 enclosed in a hard matrix (the two usually go together) the 

 matrix must be removed by the use of fine chisels and needles. 

 If the rock is not too hard, a very useful tool for the work is a 

 sewing-needle set in a handle; such tools, it is hardly necessary 

 to say, make the work very slow and call for unlimited patience, 

 but haste emphatically means waste in dealing with fossils. 

 Great care is required in this work, for the bones are apt to be 

 more or less displaced and scattered, and they often turn up 

 where they are least expected. An incautious blow may do 

 irreparable mischief. Very soft bones must be treated with 

 alcoholic solutions of glue, which readily penetrate into the 

 pores and set into a iirm mass, making the specimens almost 

 as hard as recent bones. Fragmentary specimens are labori- 

 ously pieced together — most tedious work, but work which is 

 often richly rewarded by making heaps of irregular fragments 

 grow into beautifully complete specimens. 



The pasted blocks require skillful handling; the strips may 

 be removed by finding the end of one and slowly pulling it off, 

 aiding the process, if necessary, by a damp sponge, which 

 softens the paste. As soon as the bone is exposed and a loose 

 fragment is seen, the fragment is at once lifted out, cleaned, 

 and cemented back in its place, when a new surface is laid bare 

 and treated in the same way. In this fashion it is possible to 

 save a specimen which, if allowed to break up, would involve a 

 hopeless task in piecing it together again. 



All the processes described and all the labor, skill, and 



