298 NATURAL SCIENCE. May, 



owing, not only to the expense of preserving the specimens in spirit, 

 but also to the impossibility of presenting them to the public in any- 

 thing like their natural condition. Mounting or stuffing fishes is the 

 art in which taxidermy has achieved least, and it is imperative that 

 our South African fishes for exhibition should be modelled and 

 coloured from nature by a skilful artist." 



Mr. Haly, however, seems to have solved the problem of preser- 

 vation for exhibition purposes: he writes thus: — " A specimen of a 

 wrasse prepared by the gum and glycerine process in November, 

 1884, is ^ow in my office, having been exposed to the light for the last 

 thirteen years, and not a single tint has faded." Dr. Plaly's original 

 paper on this method and its alternative of " carbolicised " oil was 

 published in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic 

 Society, vol. xii., pp. 65-73 (1892). The paper concludes with the 

 following recipe, which we quote for the special benefit of our many 

 readers in tropical countries : " Add carbolic acid to cocoanut oil till 

 the oil marks 10 to 20 degrees below proof on an hydrometer. The 

 more powerful the acid, the more powerful the dehydrating effect, and 

 judgment must be used. In this climate it is best, although not 

 absolutely necessary, to remove the entrails. Place the specimen, 

 carefully wrapped in rag, in plenty of this preparation. If wanted 

 to mount for show, drain off the superfluous oil and mount in 

 glycerine." 



" Many of our exhibited specimens," continues Dr. Haly in his 

 Report of 1896, "prepared by these methods date from 1885, and 

 none are less than four years old. Casts, however carefully painted, 

 can never give the same effect as the natural tints seen through a 

 highly refractive medium. If, however, the gum and glycerine 

 process is objected to on the score of its expense, or the carbolicised 

 oil process on account of the difficulty of eliminating the oil from the 

 specimen, which is however merely a question of time, mixtures of 

 chloride of zinc in spirit or of formol and carbolic acid are both free 

 from the above objections. I cannot give the exact proportions of 

 the chloride of zinc and spirit, which probably ought to vary with the 

 character of the fish to be preserved, but a three per cent, solution of 

 half carbolic acid and half formol seems to be perfectly satisfactory. 

 I have lately preserved a wrasse, Jtdis lunaris (Linn.), by this means, 

 the colour of which is the most difficult to keep in the whole animal 

 kingdom. The specimens should of course be transferred to glycerine 

 as soon as possible." 



** With regard to reptiles, I find the chloride of zinc and spirit 

 mixture one of the best mediums for resisting the desiccating action 

 of glycerine. I employ proof spirit raised to the specific gravity of 

 sea water by the addition of Burnet's solution. A specimen of 

 Lyvioccphalus scutatns preserved in this way three years ago still retains 

 all the softness of its brown and yellow tints, and the delicate 

 opalescence on the shoulder." 



