74 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [April, 
liquid will be immediately drawn under the sections. Bubbles of air will” 
rarely remain beneath the sections, but if they do, they may easily be displaced 
by gently touching the section with a soft br ush. The liquid is allowed to 
evaporate spontaneously. When quite dry, which will take but a few minutes, 
the paraffine may be dissolved and the sections will be found firmly fixed. 
Celloidin sections are placed for a few minutes in ninety-five per cent. al- 
cohol, and then arranged on the coated slide. They are drained as free of 
Alcohol as possible, aa as soon as their surface is nearly dry, as is shown by 
its assuming a dull appearance, the mixture of alcohol and ether is dropped 
upon them ‘rather freely. When this has evaporated until the surface of the 
sections again assumes a dull appearance, the slide is placed in eighty per 
cent. or weaker alcohol, and may then be treated by any of the reagents appli- 
cable to paraffine sections fixed with collodion. 
The advantages claimed for this method are three: the use of heat is dis- 
pensed with, and thus one source of inconvenience and injury to the sections 
is avoided ; the paraffine is not removed (or melted) until the sections are fixed, 
and thus in sections consisting of disconnected parts, the position of these 
parts is preserved ; labor and work-table space are saved by having a.single 
method which is applicable to both parafine and celloidin sections. Ina 
later note Prof. Summers adds :—: The following simpler method is found to 
work as well. Place the sections in 95 per cent. alcohol for a minute or two, 
arrange on the slide, drain off the superfluous alcohol by tipping the slide, 
then pour over the sections sulphuric ether vapor from bottle of liquid ether. 
The celloidin will immediately soften. Place the slide in 80, then 95 alco- 
hol. The sections will be found firmly fixed, and may be stained, cleared,’ 
etc.— The Microscope. 
Chloride of gold for staining animal tissues. 
Mr. A. Underwood immerses the section first in carbonate of sodium for 
one hour, then for an equal time in neutral solution of gold chloride excluded 
from the light. After a few minutes in soda bath it is kept for 14 hours in 
warm 1% alae of formic acid and then mounted in glycerin jelly.— Vatzonal 
Druggist. 
The preservative fluid of Prof. Wickersheim, of the Anatomical Mu- 
seum at Berlin, is made as follows :—Caustic potash 60 pts., arsenious acid 
10 pts. ; dissolve with heat in 500 pts. water ; add water enough to make 3000 
pts. To this add roo pts. alum, 25' pts. salt, 2 pts. saltpetre. After cooling 
filter the solution. To ro litres of this neutral, colorless, and odorless fluid 
add 4 litres glycerin and 1 litre methyl alcohol. The body to be preserved 
is injected with this fluid and then immersed in it. It is said to prevent 
decomposition, so that the color, form, and flexibility of dead animal bodies 
and all their tissues are preserved completely for years. —Dr. H. SPEIER in 
Pharmaceutical Record. 
1) 
A chick section, cut by the method of Dr. Reeves, of Wheeling, W. Va., 
described in our January number (see p. 12), has been sent us by Mr. Jay L. 
Smith, of New York, who reports himself as very well pleased with the method 
as a rapid one, and of value for sections for diagnostic purposes. The sec- 
tion he has sent us of a chick of eight days’ incubation shows plainly that the 
process of imbedding is a good one and much more rapid than the longer one. 
The section sent us is not perfect, but, then, a histologist understands very well 
