608 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [2] 



tbe preservative agent. They should also be capable of being dosed se- 

 (Uirely so as to guard against leakage when ])acked for shipment, and 

 also to prevent eva])oration when stored away in the cabinet. Rubber 

 corks are i)robably the best for small vials in which it is designed to 

 preserve small embryos or small organisms. 



Crowding a large number of small specimens into one vial is wrong, 

 and abundant space shouUl left besides the specimens for accommoda- 

 tion of a suflicient amount of the hardening reagent or the preserva- 

 tive fluid wiiich may be used, otherwise it is not possible in most cases 

 to harden the speciuiens uniformly and quickly, because there is not 

 enough of the reagent around the specimens. Delicate embryos are 

 often distorted in the process of killing and hardening, so as to be bent 

 and twisted, which makes it difficult to get the axis of their bodies into 

 a single plane, which is very desirable, especially if it is intended to 

 prepare serial sections with the newer forms of the sledge microtome. 

 In order to avoid such distortion as much as possible, if embryos or 

 other small animals are killed and hardened immediately in the vials, 

 it is best to cork the latter and lay them on their sides so that the ob- 

 jects, especially if slender, do not rest in a mass on the bottom, but on 

 the undermost side of the vials. These precautions should be borne in 

 mind in handling recently hatched fish embryos, the tails of the latter 

 being especially liable to become bent and distorted by the weight of 

 those overlying those on the bottom of the vial if the latter is placed 

 upright while the process of hardening is in jjrogress. 



PacJcing and labeling. — It is of the utmost importance that small, deli- 

 cate objects should be carefully packed in the bottles when it is pro- 

 posed to ship them, so that they may not be shaken about, especially 

 if moderately large ; unless this is done important portions may be 

 broken off and lost after the specimens have been hardened by the 

 preservative. To avoid this, the specimen, if large, should be wrapped 

 in pieces of cheese cloth, which may be secured around the object with 

 string. If the objcH'ts are small wrapping them carefully in soft tissue 

 paper will be found expedient, or if the bottle should not be full, soft 

 tissue paper crushed into springy masses may be used to fill up the 

 vacant spa(!e in the bottles, care being taken that the packing of paper 

 is not forced in too tightly so as to injure the specimens. Paper is bet- 

 ter for this purpose than cotton wool, which, in the case of specimens 

 which have hooked teeth or processes projecting from the body fre- 

 fpiently becomes entangled with such i)rocesses as to cause them to be 

 torn off when the specimens are unpacked. Finally, it is a good rule in 

 packing to fill the vials full of the preservative fluid, which keeps the 

 specimens immersed and also juevents injurious shaking when shipped. 



Not less important than the packing is the proper labeling of the 

 specimens. Every vial, if containing only a single specimen or a single 

 series, should be labeled with the date of collection, the locality, and 

 the name of the collector. If a number are sent in the same vessel, each 



