ON COLLECTING AND PRESERVING FISHES 77 
specimen should bear a small numbered parchment label tied 
round the tail or base of the pectoral fin, and referring to a list 
in which all information should be carefully noted. In view 
of the possibility of the label becoming detached and lost, 
a duplicate may be inserted under the left gill-cover. 
In the list or pocket-book should be recorded — the exact 
locality, the date, and the manner in which the specimen was 
obtained, the native name if known, some notes on the colora- 
tion, the shape of the pupil of the eye, and any other information 
that may be procured. Coloured sketches of the specimens 
would be valuable, but drawings, the originals of which have 
not been preserved, are useless. 
Large specimens should, of course, be placed in the collect- 
ing boxes such as are provided by the British Museum, but 
these boxes may be usefully supplemented by cases made of 
zinc plates cut to the proper size and put together when required 
by the collector himself with a soldering apparatus. These 
cases could be sent home, if necessary, protected by wooden 
outside boxes. Small and delicate specimens should not go 
into the collecting boxes, but are better preserved in jars with 
screw stoppers or ordinary pickle-jars closed with bladder ; 
the bladders must be allowed to dry well on the stoppers before 
packing. Sealing wax, wdiich melts when in contact with 
alcohol, should never be used. 
Fishes over 2 feet can be preserved as skins or as skeletons. 
The skull and gill-arches must be left in the skin, the fish being 
cut open along the abdominal line from the throat to the base 
of the ventral fins, then on one side above the anal fin to the 
root of the caudal. The bones supporting the fins are cut 
through, all the bones and flesh are removed and the inside of 
the skin is cleaned. The fish is then filled with flax or cotton 
wool and dried. The fin-rays need not be spread out in the 
process of drying ; they are best laid down against the body, 
so as to avoid the risk of their being torn or broken in transit. 
Skeletons need only be roughly cleaned, care being taken 
not to remove any of the bones and fin-rays, and dried in the 
sun. The muscles supported by the delicate bones above the 
ribs should not be removed, but merely thinned down as much 
as possible. 
