
100 MISCELLANEOUS PARTICULARS. 
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 you can stop the process just when the flesh 
is completely dissolved 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 cylinders 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, thatit — 
‘“‘defaces” the specimen; but I confess I see in dry bones no — 
beauty but that of utility.* 7 
$53. Nests anp EcGs.t A few words upon this subject will 
not come amiss. Ornithology and odlogy are twin 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 Reports, and may also be had separately. 
+ Complete instructions for collecting and preserving nests and eggs are pub- 
lished by the Smithsonian Institution and can be obtained from the Naturalists’ 
Agency. 
