. 590 NOTES AND NEWS. 
Our experience with acetic acid as a preserving or preparatory — 
fluid is rather more favourable than that of the author’s, and it has 
helped us in some cases when preserving insect larve. 
The book, except perhaps in the really excellent technical 
descriptions of how skins are made, or skeletons set up, or flowers | 
modelled, is not intended merely to be read, but to be used for 
reference, hence it bristles with particulars of the compositions and 
applications of the necessary materials for the subjects it discusses. 
It was with great pleasure we came across the strong con-— 
demnation of the use of arsenic as a preservative agent, and the 
substitution of others of a non-poisonous character. ur own — 
experience is that arsenic is too dangerous to the user, and useless 
as a preservative of skins. ‘For the preservation of mammals — 
arsenical paste is quite useless, causing the hair to ‘sweat’ from — 
the skin and not allowing the operator to stretch it without injury 
when modelling ; added to which it is quite impossible to relax such 
a skin by soaking in water. . . . Arsenic is only a drier of skins.’ 
The work is illustrated by plates prepared from photographs, and 
these are excellent and fairly numerous (22 in number), and many — 
of them are full of examples of the methods of modelling, especially 
in paper, of which the author is an adept. 
The book, as a Curator’s guide to that part of natural history to 
which the author has given so much attention, we sincerely welcome. - 
Would that all local museums could be so subsidised by Corporate 
grants like to his own, that they might purchase specimens and pay 
men, as at Leicester, to display the beasts and birds in a natural — 
fashion ; without that aid this book could not have been written. — 
But the ‘book i is also a successful attempt to teach a better system of © 
preservation and display of natural history objects to taxidermists, by 
whom it must, when it is known, be appreciated.—H. CROWTHER. 
ay os TS ai ealeepmalaante agape aay yn eere SA eral Soe ae: os eam ppeaaptemmeme ES =| pon malian este =, SES =P 
NOTES AND NEWS. 
Ata Faas of the Hull poeatinc and Field Naturalists’ Club, held on 
January 6th, 1897, Mr. T. Sheppard handed round some huge bones which had 
recently ri dug up in the vicinity of Goole, and sent over by Mr. Thos. Bunker 
of that place. comparing these with the large whale’s skeleton in the Hull 
Museum, they proved to be part of the bones belonging to the y 
whale—no doubt a relic ee the old whaling days. They have several grooves an 
impressions on them, which have evidently been made by a plough-share passing 
fe ighbourhood of the Humber, 
gate-posts, or as orname d ones are to be seen in 
So otis. at fot of the villages pony pre situated a good dias rae the 
