LETTER TO WILLIAM SWAINSON, ESQ. 519 



When you found, during your stay in Pernambuco, that the solu- 

 tion which you had carried out with you from England was of no 

 avail against the thrice-repeated attacks of the ants, did you not 

 suspect that you might possibly have got it made too weak ? Had 

 you stepped for a minute into the nearest chemist's shop, and pro- 

 cured a little more corrosive sublimate, your solution would then 

 have done its duty in the most satisfactory manner. When I was in 

 the Brazilian towns and forests, the ants never injured my specimens 

 in natural history. 



As you have introduced the name of Sir James Smith, apparently 

 to deprive me of any little merit due to the discovery of applying this 

 solution ; tell me, candid Sir, had you then learned, or have you since 

 learned, that Sir James, or any other person, had applied it to birds, 

 to quadrupeds, to serpents, to fishes, to wood, to clothes, to hats, to 

 insects, to the lining of carriages, to furs, and to ornamental feathers ? 

 To all which articles, I had been in the habit of applying it for many 

 years before you received from me your first lesson, in your father's 

 house at Wavertree. 



If you have ascertained the fact, then, your paragraph in Doctor 

 Lardner will be less objectionable ; still, give you what credit I may, 

 methinks you have ill-requited the former kindness of your disinter- 

 ested Mentor. 



You recommend the use of arsenic soap, " from long experience ! " 

 and a little after you prove its deficiency, by acknowledging that " a 

 box, strongly impregnated by camphor, or the oven," must be used 

 when you find it necessary to place your skins " in quarantine." Why 

 in quarantine, Mr Swainson ? What ! have your skins got the plague 

 of insects amongst them, after they have been smeared with your 

 wonderful arsenic soap, which you recommend " from long experi- 

 ence?" 



I have read over your " Process of Preservation," certainly with 

 more attention than it deserves, and I find it wrong at every point. 

 I am quite prepared to prove, that he who adopts it can never, by 

 any chance, succeed in producing a specimen that will bear a scientific 

 inspection. His preparations will be out of all shape and proportion. 

 If they should consist of birds, they will come out of his hands a 

 decided deformity. If of quadrupeds, they will represent hideous 



