17 



beautiful specimen. If you see bones or other promising marks at 

 the edge of a broken piece of rock, collect all the pieces you can 

 where it is found ; place them in their proper positions, bedded in 

 plaster of Paris, on a tray, or in a box ; then clear away from one of 

 the surfaces, till you come down to the face of the fossil of which the 

 broken edge showed the section. Such specimens, when thoroughly 

 cleaned, and bone specimens in general, will be both strengthened 

 and greatly improved in appearance by being washed with gelatine, 

 which is readily done with a large and soft camel's-hair brush. 



If a fossil is found broken, or breaks in carriage, nothing is easier 

 than to mend it. Get the pieces perfectly clean and dry. If it is 

 lias or oolite, or other hard rock, use thin hot glue, applied to both 

 surfaces, and these will join perfectly. Never use "cement" of 

 any sort. If it is chalk, it requires that, before using the glue, the 

 dry chalk should be well saturated with thin gum or gelatine, or 

 very thin glue ; otherwise the pieces will not hold together long ; 

 for the glue, when hard, fastens on to only a thin coat of the chalk, 

 which has so little of binding hold to the rest of the body of the 

 chalk, that it will, with a slight force, come away. Many fine speci- 

 mens in the British Museum are seen in this state. 



At the pits and cuttings, there are often very intelligent men who 

 may be readily taught to know the kind of fossils of which you are 

 in search. Such assistance affords a much more desirable resource 

 than the " dealers" who, entirely uninformed, sometimes spring up 

 in such neighbourhoods. As to the latter, you must always be on 

 guard. The most ingenious devices are had recourse to by them 

 to mislead the unwary. There is a well-known case of a sheep's 

 jaw in chalk being offered for sale by such a dealer. Always look 

 with suspicion on very fine-looking specimens of star-fish, cidaris 

 with spines, ophiura, pentacrinite, etc. Even fishes are not diffi- 

 cult to manufacture. But you must not despise such dealers. You 

 may sometimes get a valuable specimen through their hands, though 

 distorted by the ignorance of the dealer. I obtained, thus, the large 

 limb of the pterodactyle from the chalk, which Professor Owen has 

 figured ; but which, when it came to me (having been broken in 

 getting it from the rock), had the parts displaced in a most pre- 

 posterous manner. The finest specimen of a spine of the Chalk 

 Sharks which I have ever seen, was obtained in the same way, from 



