STORAGE OF MAMMAL SKINS 235 



The habits of Stomoxys differ widely from those of Musca domestica. 

 The Stomoxys is a biting fly, feeding on the blood of the higher vertebrates. 

 It is found in the vicinity of dwellings, particularly where horses and cattle 

 are kept, but it is apt to remain out doors in warm sunny places and does 

 not come into the house much except at night and before rain. According to 

 Brues it breeds in "fermenting heaps of grass, straw and similar substances, 

 horse manure, cow dung and even garbage" and its preference is probably 

 in "about the order named." Many devices used for trapping the house 

 fly and depending on its liking for sweets will of course prove of no avail 

 with the stable fly. For the control of this insect, dependence must prob- 

 ably be placed chiefly upon elimination of its breeding places. There can 

 be no doubt that the recognition of the importance of this insect in the trans- 

 mission of infant paralysis, which we owe to such a striking cooperation 

 between epidemiologists, entomologists and experimental physiologists, 

 opens a new chapter in our campaign against this disease; and the summer 

 of 1913 should throw a flood of light upon the subject. 



STORAGE OF MAMMAL SKINS 



By Roy C. Andrews 



THE care of large mammal skins is one of the problems which every 

 museum has to meet. The two things most to be desired are 

 safety and accessibility and in order to secure either it is sometimes 

 difficult not to sacrifice the other. The skins when they have been received 

 from the field are first tanned after which they can be easily folded, but even 

 then are of great bulk and in some cases of considerable weight. 



The problem of their storage has been met by different institutions in 

 various ways. One museum stores the skins in large cans eight or ten feet 

 long by four or five feet in height and as much in depth, where the specimens 

 can be spread out almost at their full length. This method has its advantage 

 but the very serious difficulty of requiring an almost unlimited amount of 

 space. The cans are however movable which is a point in its favor. 



Another American institution is contemplating the installation of a cold 

 storage room in which the skins will be hung from racks which can easily be 

 pulled out and examined and where the temperature is sufficiently low to 

 prevent the breeding of Dermestes, the pest of all natural history collections. 



The American Museum of Natural History has met the problem in a still 

 different way. In two large rooms storage cases have been built solidly 

 into the wall. The backs and sides are of cement, the doors of iron and the 

 trays of woven iron wire. The cabinets are about six feet high, above them 

 a latticed iron floor has been built and a duplicate row of cases installed 

 thus giving a second-floor room and double space, all of which is readily 



