PRESERVING EGG-SHELLS. 67 



shell. You need not be fearful of getting the liquor 

 into your mouth ; for, as soon as it rises in the shell, 

 the cold will strike your finger and thumb, and then 

 you cease sucking. Shake the shell just as you did 

 when the water was in it, and then blow the solu- 

 tion back into the glass. Your egg- shell is now 

 beyond the reach of corruption ; the membrane 

 retains for ever its pristine whiteness ; and no insect, 

 for the time to come, will ever venture to prey upon 

 it. If you wish your egg to appear extremely bril- 

 liant, give it a coat of mastic varnish, put on very 

 sparingly with a camel-hair pencil. Green or blue 

 eggs must be done with gum arabic, because the 

 mastic varnish is apt to injure the colour. 



This is all. How dull I have been, not to have 

 found out this simple process long ago ! I have 

 used the solution to preserve skins, furs, and fea- 

 thers from putrefaction and the moth, for nearly 

 twenty years ; still the idea never struck me, till 

 three weeks ago, that it could be so serviceable in 

 preventing all tendency to putrefaction in the mem- 

 brane of the shell, which had given me so much 

 trouble, and caused so many useless experiments. 

 I trust that the kind-hearted naturalist will not turn 

 this little process of preparing eggs into affliction to 

 poor birds. One egg out of each nest (with a few 

 exceptions) will not be missed by the owner ; but 

 to take them all away would be hard indeed. Such 

 an act would make the parent bird as sad and 

 sorrowful as Niobe. You know Niobe's story : Apollo 

 slew her every child. 



My friend, George Walker of Killingbeck Lodge, 

 F 2 



