CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 133 



speedily destroyed. Various methods have been resorted 

 to, in order to guard against these depredators. If the 

 specimens are occasionally baked in an oven, the eggs and 

 larvae of many insects will be destroyed, but it is scarcely 

 possible by heat alone to kill them all, without injuring the 

 specimens. The protecting method which has been re- 

 sorted to, consists in incorporating with the substance of 

 the specimen, some poisonous ingredient, which shall prove 

 fatal to any animal that ventures to feed upon it. The two 

 substances which are now universally employed for this 

 end, are corrosive sublimate or oxymuriat of mercury, and 

 the common white oxide of arsenic. 



The corrosive sublimate is usually kept unmixed, and 

 in a state of solution in water or alcohol. This solution is 

 applied to all the parts of the preparation with a brush. 

 Although an effectual preventive of the attacks of vermin, 

 it scarcely possesses sufficient antiseptic powers to resist the 



methods, the most effectual, where it can be done to its greatest advantage, 

 that is in a pure air ; and more especially on a sea-shore, where they can be 

 daily washed with snlt-water." Anatomical Instructor, p. 99. In order to 

 make natural skeletons of small animals, he adds, " Mice, small birds, &c. 

 may be put into a box, of proper size, in which holes are bored on all sides ; 

 and then burried in an ant-hill, when the ants will enter numerously at the 

 holes, and eat away all the fleshy parts, leaving only the bones and connec- 

 ting ligaments : They may be afterwards macerated in clean water for a 

 day or two, to extract the bloody matter, and to cleanse them from any dirt 

 they may have acquired ; then whitened by lime or alum- water, and dried 

 in frames, or otherwise as may be most convenient. In country places, I 

 have sometimes employed wasps for this purpose, placing the subject near 

 one of their nests, or in any empty sugar cask where they resort in great 

 plenty ; they perform the dissection with much greater expedition, and e- 

 qually as well as the ants. I have seen them clean the skeleton of a mouse in 

 two or three hours, when the ants would require a week." P. 105. Anoint- 

 ing the animals with honey, after flaying them, encourages these dissectors 

 to begin their work. 



