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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XII. 



On taking charge of the Museum in 1875, I had not the 

 slightest doubt about the success of carbolic acid, and 

 expected at once to be able to have a good show, easily and 

 inexpensively prepared, of all our reptiles and fish. My 

 collection of English fish in London had been kept in a 

 covered zinc pail in a solution of 1 in 400, and although the 

 fish of northern seas have, as a rule, so little colour that 

 I had not gained much knowledge on that point, there 

 was no doubt about the preservation of the animals 

 themselves. I was very soon undeceived. A few experi- 

 ments on the common fish and lizards of the Cinnamon 

 Gardens- showed that solutions of carbolic acid in water 

 do not act in Colombo as preservatives at all, whatever 

 the strength employed. Such an experience ought to have 

 warned me not to cry before I was out of the wood ; but in 

 1878 I reported a great success to Government by first em- 

 ploying alcohol for a short time, and then removing the 

 specimens to a solution of carbolic acid and nitrate of 

 potassium. 



I may as well mention at this point that any form of the 

 substances known commonly as salts, whether as poisonous, 

 as corrosive sublimate, or as harmless as alum, are all 

 alike destructive in this climate to any specimens prepared 

 by them. One of the most extraordinary instances of this 

 was in a very fine skate most beautifully mounted for the 

 Museum by the American taxidermist, Mr. Hornaday. 



The skin had been brought in brine from Jaffna, and soon 

 after it was exhibited the fish began to give trouble. It was 

 carbolicised, it was varnished, it was dried in the sun, it was 

 painted ; but it slowly dissolved before our eyes, exactly as the 

 Cheshire cat did before Alice's, till nothing was left but its 

 grin, represented by the curious dental plates on my office 

 table ; but even these broke up at last. I need scarcely say that 

 whenever I saw any solutions described as being used by 

 other naturalists, I tried them also ; they were all alike — abso- 

 lute and complete failures. The only approach to success 

 was made by first preparing the specimens by arsenic paste. 



