PRESERVING EGG-SHELLS. 
67 
shell. You need not be fearful of getting the liquor 
into your mouth ; for, as soon as it rises in the shell, 
the cold will strike your finger and thumb, and then 
you cease sucking. Shake the shell just as you did 
when the water was in it, and then blow the solu- 
tion back into the glass. Your egg-shell is now 
beyond the reach of corruption ; the membrane 
retains for ever its pristine whiteness ; and no insect, 
for the time to come, will ever venture to prey upon 
it. If you wish your egg to appear extremely bril- 
liant, give it a coat of mastic varnish, put on very 
sparingly with a camel-hair pencil. Green or blue 
eggs must be done with gum arable, because the 
mastic varnish is apt to injure the colour. 
This is all. How dull I have been, not to have 
found out this simple process long ago! I have 
used the solution to preserve skins, furs, and fea- 
thers from putrefaction and the moth, for nearly 
twenty years; still the idea never struck me, till 
three weeks ago, that it could be so serviceable ifi 
preventing all tendency to putrefaction in the mem- 
brane of the shell which had given me so much 
trouble, and caused so many useless experiments. 
I trust that the kind-hearted naturalist will not turn 
this little process of preparing eggs into affliction to 
poor birds. One egg out of each nest (with a few 
exceptions) will not be missed by the owner ; but 
to take them all away would be hard indeed. Such 
an act would make the parent bird as sad and sor- 
rowful as Niobe. You know Niobe's story: Apollo 
slew her every child. 
My friend George Walker, of Killingbeck Lodge, 
F 2 
