2Y4 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Oct., 



A New Method of Preserving and Mounting Specimens. 



By A. HALY, 

 COLOMBO, CEYLON. 



On taking charge of this Museum in 1875, I had not the 

 shghtest doubt about the success of carbolic acid, and expected 

 to make a good show of all our reptiles and fish, easily and in- 

 expensively. My collection of English fish in London had been 

 kept in a covered zinc pail in a solution of 1 in 400, nnd there 

 was no doubt about the preservation of the animals themselves. 

 A few experiments on the common fish and lizaids of the Cin- 

 namon Gardens showed that solutions of carbolic acid in water 

 do not act in Colombo as preservatives at all, whatever the 

 strength employed. I had first employed alcohol for a short 

 time, and then removed the specimens to a solution of carbolic 

 acid and nitrate of potassium. 



The substances known commonly as salts, whether as poison- 

 ous as corrosive sublimate, or as harmless as alum, are all alike 

 destructive in this climate to any specimens prepared by thenj. 

 I tried many difierent kinds and always failed. The only ap- 

 proach to success was made by first preparing the sp cimensby 

 arsenic paste, and then mounting in kerosine oil. A row of fish 

 prepared in this way was exhibited, and preserved their form 

 and color beautifully for about six months, until one morning 

 I found them nearly all broken up, and nothing left but a pre- 

 cipitate of muscle and bone at the bottom of the bottles. 



There was one branch of the animal kingdom, I had always 

 been very anxious to make a good show of, and that was spiders. 

 I naturally looked to microscopical preparations to solve that 

 question, and tried gum and glycerine. This had been given 

 up because of the great difficulties experienced with the air 

 bubbles which formed so abundantly in it ; but that did not 

 matter to me. There was something about this mixture that 

 strongly attracted my attention. Its action was unlike anything 

 I had seen before, and I tried our beautiful little gold and red 

 fish in it, so abundant in the Colombo lake, and which are al- 

 ways my first test for the color-keeping properties of any pre- 

 servative. I found these little fish became semi-transparent and 

 as hard as glass, and that their colors seemed as though burnt 

 in. Twelve months afterwards those in kerosene had broken 



