NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 379 



Collection, and many who can spare the cash and not the time or 

 energy, will gladly rely on professional assistance. As our author 

 remarks, there is really no reason for " the narrow way in which 

 most professional taxidermists bolster up their art in a secret 

 and entirely unnecessary manner — unnecessary because no ama- 

 teur can, but by the severest application, possibly compete with 

 the experience of the technical or professional worker." 



We cannot pretend to criticise a book which demands a special 

 and technical knowledge. Mr. Browne is an advocate of non- 

 arsenical preservatives, which perhaps prejudice alone may have 

 prevented our having personally used. There are also to be found 

 the recipes for numerous preservative fluids both for fish and 

 reptiles, some well known and others apparently novel. Besides 

 these, we are told how to fight and overcome museum pests, the 

 material with which to mend broken specimens, how to clean 

 skins and prepare microscopic objects, and to fit up cases and 

 cabinets ; of course the directions to skin and set up mammals, 

 birds, reptiles, fishes, &c, are fully detailed, and the volume 

 concludes with advice on museum arrangement. We have found 

 so many useful hints in the perusal of this manual that we now 

 regard it as a friend on the book-shelf to be often consulted, for 

 there are few zoologists who are not collectors, and few collections 

 that do not sometimes give anxiety. This is a subject which 

 might well find a place in our " Notes and Queries." 



