I20 THE PRESERVATION OF MARINE ANIIMALS 



until perfect tranquillity and healthy surrounding conditions tempt 

 the creatures to expand again and breathe or feed freely. The 

 violence with which the capture of such animals is often necessarily 

 accompanied causes them to be contracted when first obtained, and 

 they contract whenever they are taken out of sea water, only expand- 

 ing when submerged and left undisturbed for some time. Unless 

 the necessary precautions are taken, the slightest attempt at killing 

 the animals for preservation produces sudden and complete con- 

 traction, and the idea of obtaining dead specimens permanently 

 preserved, in the condition which was nrttural to them when alive and 

 expanded, seems incapable of realisation. 



Nevertheless, the difficulties involved have in recent years been 

 to a great extent overcome. The improvement and invention of 

 methods of preservation has been made a special object at the 

 Zoological Station of Naples, and the perfection of the specimens 

 sent out from that institution has become celebrated all over the 

 world. In 1890 the chief of the department by which the work of 

 preservation was carried out was authorised to make public the 

 methods he had adopted, with all their refinements, and these 

 methods are described at length in a paper in the " Mittheilungen 

 aus der Zoologischen Station zu Neapel," bd. ix. (1890) pp. 435 — 

 474. The paper has been translated or abstracted in various 

 journals. A complete translation into French is published in the 

 " Bulletin Scientifique de la France et de la Belgique," tome xxiii., 

 part i. (1891), and an abstract so comprehensive as to be almost a 

 complete English translation, will be found in the " Journal of the 

 Royal Microscopical Society," of February, 1S91, published by 

 Williams and Norgate. The latter journal is easily accessible to 

 English readers, and the summary of Lo Bianco's paper which it 

 contains may be consulted for more minute details than are given in 

 the present paper. It should be remembered that the reagents 

 employed at Naples have long been in general use, as well as many 

 of the methods described by Lo Bianco, and that, although he has 

 invented many methods and improved others, his great success has 

 been due, not so much to the use of processes unknown to others, 

 as to his intelligence and patience, and to the skill begotten of long 

 practice and scientific attention to details. Much of the renown of 

 the Naples preparations is also owing to the abundant, varied, and 

 beautiful fauna of the Mediterranean, and of the Bay of Naples in 

 particular. 



