MARINE’ COLLECTING, 41 
of bottom, date, etc. The smaller specimens should be 
placed in homceopathic vials and not mixed with larger forms. 
For larger forms the common glass fruit jars are convenient, 
both for collecting and as storage jars. 
For the majority of marine forms, alcohol is the best pre- 
servative. ‘The specimen should be first placed in weak spirit 
and after a few hours transferred to stronger and this process 
again repeated. By this the water is gradually extracted and all 
undue contraction of tissuesiavoided. Crustacea and mollusks 
intended for dissection should have the shell cut or cracked 
before placing in alcohol so that the spirit may readily pene- 
trate the soft parts which otherwise would rapidly decay. 
Medusae and some other forms are not readily preserved 
without great distortion, owing to the extremely large per- 
centage of water in their composition. Various processes 
and preparations have been employed, but success is as much 
the result of accident as of any especial skill or of any superior 
merit in the preservative. Possibly the best method is to 
place the jelly-fish for a short time in a one-tenth to one- 
twentieth per cent solution of osmic acid, and then transfer 
to fifty per cent alcohol and after a few days place in sixty 
per cent spirit. Another method is to employ a solution of 
bay salt of a specific gravity of 1.148, to each quart of which 
two ounces of alum have been added. ‘The specimen is 
daily changed to a fresh portion of the solution for a week. 
Methylated spirit, 30 under proof, with forty drops of creosote 
to the quart has also been recommended. 
It is frequently desirable to preserve animals in their ex- 
panded condition. So far as the writer is aware no method 
3* 
