JAf 4 1897 



NATURAL SCIENCE 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 57. Vol. IX. NOVEMBER. 1896. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



To Collectors of Fossils. 



DR. ARTHUR ROWE'S collection of Chalk fossils has long been 

 known to those interested in the palaeontology of that forma- 

 tion, not only for its large size, but for the loving care with which the 

 specimens have been worked out. We are, therefore, glad to have 

 persuaded its owner to furnish us with the account of his methods of 

 preparation which is published in this number. Like a wise man, he 

 has confined himself strictly to his personal experience, but it is clear 

 that many of his suggestions and many of the methods which he 

 employs for the fossils of the Chalk are applicable, with or without 

 modification, to fossils from other formations ; indeed, we understand 

 that more than one private worker in other rocks has used the dental- 

 engine with much success. 



We draw attention to this paper because it hardly seems to be 

 recognised by many of those who describe fossils even at the present 

 day how necessary it is that their specimens should be properly 

 cleaned, while it is not an exaggeration to say that more than half of 

 the descriptive palaeontology published by the past generation has to 

 be done over again in consequence of the new evidence that springs 

 to light, not by the discovery of new specimens, but merely by the 

 proper cleaning of the old ones. A modern worker who endeavours 

 to make a geological specimen tell him all that it has to say is often 

 appalled by the perfunctory manner in which the palaeontologists of a 

 former age seemed to think it sufficient to do their work. Dr. Rowe's 

 paper may also be perused with profit by the curators of many of our 

 public museums, even, as he hints, by the officials of our Government 

 establishments ; for it is an undoubted, though a lamentable, fact, that 

 there are displayed for the delectation of the British public hundreds 

 of specimens which in their present condition are almost useless to 

 the scientific investigator, but whose obscuring matrix might often be 

 removed by five minutes with the dental-engine. 



Dr. Rowe further complains that in most of our public and 



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