12 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXIV. 
All records should be preserved in a special book. Each 
case receives its number; it is best to carry the numbers on 
consecutively, for that will, among other advantages, facilitate 
references. 
The number a body has been given and the year when 
received, are stamped indelibly on a card, and this is so attached 
to the body as not to be lost. When the body comes on the 
dissecting table, various means may be used to keep the sub- 
ject identified. In all cases it is well to preserve the original 
card secured in some way at the table. 
While the body is being dissected, care must be exercised 
that the different parts are not displaced. As soon as any 
long bone, or the scapula, or innominatum, sacrum, lower jaw 
or skull, is finished with, it should be the duty of some one in 
the dissecting room to attach by wire a little metal tag to it, 
with stamped-in number of the subject (zinc, or zinc-lead alloy 
wire and metal are to be used; steel wire will not last, while 
copper wire will color the bone). 
All the short bones of each group (hand, foot, sternum and 
ribs, vertebral column) are placed into a small-mesh zinc wire 
cage, or into a small net (which latter, however, should be 
strong enough to resist boiling or maceration), and to each 
cage or net a similar metal tag is appended as to each larger 
bone.! 
The tags are to stay on all the bones to which they were 
attached individually. On the short bones, when prepared and 
dried (which latter should be done with the bones still in their 
sacks or cages), the number of the subject is placed in indelible 
ink. 
Chemicals should be avoided in the preparation of bones for 
study, as they affect the bone weight and specific gravity, both 
valuable points for investigation. Too long boiling is also 
injurious, particularly to the bones of the young or old. 
The problem of storing prepared and marked bones is of 
considerable importance. It presents several distinct points to 
which attention must be directed, namely: (1) the bones should 
be stored so as to be protected against dust, sunlight, and 
1 Syst fully used at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. 
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