1880. } Zoology. 369 
many owners of “brown stone fronts” have put up wire screens 
to keep them from nesting over the windows and doors, and 
many other buildings are rendered unsightly by their droppings. 
Houses are put up for these feathered Arabs, and in Newark, as 
in many other places, the fiction that the sparrow is an insectivor- 
ous bird is cherished, notwithstanding the fact that they can be 
seen seeking their food in the middle of the street, and that their 
short bills indicate a preference for grain. : 
Grace church is the best place in the city to study sparrows, its 
splendid ivy-covered sides being rendered unsightly by the straws 
and sticks which protrude from it all the way from ten feet from 
the ground to the eaves, in many places one to each square foot. 
The noise of this colony greatly interferes with the services, so 
much as to make it necessary, as I am informed, to close the win- 
dows in summer; and the walk in front, under the trees, is 
polluted by their droppings, and many dresses have thus been 
ruined. 
Several nests were completed in the ivy on Grace church 
before the roth of January, when a few days of cold and wet 
weather put a stop to further desire for housekeeping for a few days. 
It was renewed again from the 15th to the 20th, but just how 
far it had advanced by the time of the Christmas snowfall, can- 
not say, as the nests are difficult of access; still the fact of their 
building would argue that if the weather had continued mild for 
a week or ten days longer a brood would have been the result— 
Fred. Mather. 
A New Preservative Fiuip.—About six months ago the Ger- 
man papers brought to notice that the conservator of the Univer- 
sity of Berlin, Mr. Wickersheimer, had invented a fluid for pre- 
serving animal as well as vegetable tissues, which was said to 
Surpass anything that had ever been used for that purpose. Mr. 
ickersheimer’s laboratory was reported to be the gathering- 
as follows , 
“ Mr. Wickersheimer has two ways of operating with his fluid. 
He either injects it into the veins of the body which is to be pre- 
served, or soaks the whole object or any part of it in the fluid. 
By these methods the bodies are preserved from decomposition, 
and after having been taken out of the fluid and dried, their 
natural colors as well as the elasticity of the tissue and flexibility 
of all the joints are secured. i 
orter saw the body of a boy which had died several 
months before, lying free in the open air and having perfectly 
