THE MUSEUM. 



i8i 



Before closing I wish to say a few 

 words about the ill effects arising from 

 the use of formalin. No one to my 

 knowledge ever got into the near vicin- 

 ity of an open bottle of Formalin with- 

 out noticing the irritating effect which 

 it causes on the mucous membrane. 

 This irritation one becomes hardened 

 to after enduring it for a time and it 

 ceases to annoy much. Formalin will 

 also get into cuts and "raise cain." 

 It causes irritating sores, which seem 

 to spread day by day unless the hands 

 are kept out of formalin or rubber 

 gloves used to protect them. It also 

 "tans" the skin making it tough and 

 rather black, and a person's hands 

 after a few weeks' steady acquaintance 

 with Formalin are generally in no con- 

 dition to be exhibited at a whist party. 

 This injury to the hands may be rem- 

 edied in part by the use of rubber 

 gloves, but rubber gloves are rather 

 expensive, easily damaged and rather 

 clumsy. As a rule the only time that 

 one needs to get his hands much in 

 contact with formalin is when inject- 

 ing, and in ordinary collecting there is 

 not much of this to be done. It is 

 only when one has to inject large 

 quantities of material day after day 

 that the hands suffer so much. 



If there are any points in regard to 

 the use of Formalin, which I have not 

 yet made clear, I shall be glad to do 

 so at any time provided I am able. I 

 should also like to hear any additional 

 remarks from others on this interesting 

 subject. 



F. P. Drowne. 



Plenty of Work for Young Ex- 

 plorers. 



It is most important that the young 

 explorer should start out in the right 

 direction, for there are several kinds of 

 explorers and it is quite worth while to 

 become one kind and hardly worth the 

 outlay of time and trouble to become 

 one of the other kinds. To explore, 

 we are told by our dictionaries, signi- 

 fies "to search or pry into; to examine 



by trial; to inspect carefully." It is 

 the first and last of these definitions 

 that appear to me to best cover what 

 I want to impress on my readers, viz: 

 that to pry into and to inspect care- 

 fully is the true way in which explora- 

 tion should be carried on. And, fur- 

 ther than that, that anything less than 

 that is exploration but in name. 



When I speak of explorers, probably 

 most of my readers think at once of 

 Stanley and Peary, and Sir Samuel 

 Baker, and few think of Bates and 

 Whymper, and Wallace. Yet it is of 

 the latter that I wish to speak as the 

 true types of the sort of explorers who 

 leave behind them the greatest amount 

 of work that was really worth the do- 

 ing. Not that the name of Stanley 

 will not always be closely connected 

 with the exploration of Africa, nor that 

 Peary's name will not always occupy a 

 place among Arctic explorers, but they 

 will both of them be remembered for 

 what they failed to explore quite as 

 much as for what they discovered; and 

 there will always be the feeling in the 

 public mind that, had it not been for 

 the money-getting and fame-earning 

 lecture platform and the books that 

 were to follow, these explorations 

 would never have been made. But it 

 is an undeniable fact that the man who 

 goes out to a new land with these mo- 

 tives before him is far too likely to be 

 in search for the remarkable and start- 

 ling to give patient attention to the lit- 

 tle minutiae that are in reality of much 

 greater importance. For it is beyond 

 dispute that it is the things that the 

 so-called explorer who goes through 

 the land with a blare of trumpets and 

 an army of attendants never sees that 

 bring lasting credit to the conscienti- 

 ous observer who cares nothing for the 

 applause of the unthinking multitude, 

 but everything for the good opin- 

 ion of those of his fellows in science 

 who are best able to judge of the val- 

 ue and permanence of his work. 



Bates, who after eleven years of the 

 most painstaking work in the Amazon- 

 ion wildernesses, came back to England 



