100 MISCELLANEOUS PAETICULAES. 



duly entered on the register. There are methods, with which I 

 am not familiar, of making elegant bony preparations. You 

 may secure very good results by simply boiling the bones 

 or, what is perhaps better, macerating them in water till the 

 flesh is completely rotted away, and then bleaching them in 

 the sun. A little potassa or soda hastens the process. "With 

 breast bones, if j'ou can stop the process just when the flesh 

 • is completely di^ssolved but the tougher ligaments remain, you 

 secure a "natural" preparation, as it is called ; if the liga- 

 ments go too, the associate parts of a large specimen may be 

 wired together, those of a small one glued. I think it best, 

 with skulls, to clean them entirely of ligament as well, as 

 muscle ; for the underneath parts are usually those conveying 

 the most desirable information, and they should not be in the 

 slightest degree obscured. Since in such case the anvil-shaped 

 bones, the palatal cylind,ers already mentioned, and sometimes 

 other portions come apart, the whole are best kept in a suitable 

 box. I prefer to see a skull with the sheath of the beak re- 

 moved, though in some cases, particularly of hard billed birds, 

 it may profitably be left on. The completed preparations 

 should be fully labelled, by writing on the bone, in preference 

 to an accompanying or attached paper slip, which may be lost. 

 Some object to this, as others do to writing on eggs, that it 

 "defaces" the specimen ; but I confess I see in dry bones no 

 beauty but that of utility.* 



§53. Nests and EGGS.f A few words upon this subject will 

 not come amiss. Ornithology and oology are twiji studies, or 

 rather one includes the other. A collection of nests and eggs 

 is indispensable in a thorough study of birds : and many persons 

 find peculiar pleasure in forming one. Some, however, shrink 

 from "robbing birds' nests" as something particularly cruel, 

 a sentiment springing, no doubt, from the sympathy and def- 



* Prof. Newton's excellent suggestions for saving parts of the skeleton are repub- 

 lished in one of the Smithsonian Beports, and may also be had separately. ' 



t Complete instructions for collecting and preserving nests and eggs are pub- 

 lished by the Smithsonian Institution and can be obtained from the Naturalists' 

 Agency. 



