* If you get a small fish alive, then there is absolutely no way to set it more perfectly than by dropping it alive into rather strong acetic acid. This is not generally practical for say, a large salmon, but for anything of manageable size, it leaves the gills, jaws, and fins fully and stiffly extended. Strong formaldehyde has a similar effect, but not as good. Immediately the specimen is stiff and dead (a few seconds at most) remove it from the acid and rinse it gently with clean, cold water, then transfer it to a solution of ammonium carbonate, lime water, or similarly gentle alkaline material, to neutralise the acid before proceeding with whatever means of preparation you intended. See also the means I describe for preventing acid damage.

* If you happen to use hypochlorite or any other compound that releases chlorine, and you then wish to remove the residues, first rinse your specimens clean as well as is convenient, then soak them in very weak peroxide for a while. Hypochlorite and peroxide react with each other to produce free oxygen (harmless) and chloride (also harmless in any plausible concentrations). The effect is to neutralise any harmful or irritating residues or smell of chlorine.

* In at least one place I was surprised to see that Browne speaks of pinning insects exactly through the middle. Nowadays this is not widely done because one risks damaging structures on the median line of the specimen. Instead the common convention is to pin specimens somewhat to the right of the median, so that anything damaged on the right can generally be seen undamaged on the left. When setting beetles or the like, this usually means pinning them through the right elytron. Commonly one then may set the specimen with the left elytron and wing spread. Not all beetles will permit this of course, as many flightless species have their elytra fastened down, and some, such as many Scarabaeidae, flip their flying wings out pen-knife-like without noticeably raising the elytra.

* No doubt the non-toxic soaps and so on that Browne describes do work as advertised, but for keeping pests of dried material at bay, for protecting hides, preserved insects and so on, do not copy the recipes from this book. Though many of Browne's observations are in every way practical and intelligent, our current knowledge of safe, persistent, effective insecticides would not emerge for some fifty or sixty years after his death. And, please, please! Though Browne was realistic in his assessment of the dangers of the chemicals he describes, bear in mind that even his precautions were insufficient for modern purposes. Above all, be very wary of the mercurial recipes he mentions!!! It is true that mercuric chloride is very effective, but I cannot think of a single modern reason to use it. Today we have much safer, more appropriate, materials at our disposal, including some very effective fumigants that Browne would have coveted.

* Note that among the substances that Browne fails to warn us against, are those that certainly are of low acute toxicity, but present serious risks of chronic medical conditions or cancer, unrecognised in his day. His much beloved "benzoline" seems to have been largely benzene, which nowadays is regarded as a carcinogen, and for many purposes too dangerous to handle. Before this became generally known I personally handled benzene in totally unacceptable ways, but so far I seem to have been lucky, and I seem to have given up tempting fate before I incurred dangerous symptoms.

* Browne seems to me a bit too cheerful about high-pinned insects being protected from some museum pests. High pinning might help a little, but it most certainly is nowhere near adequate. I have seen entire cases reduced to labelled pins standing among Dermestid beetle frass. Use modern insecticides and carefully sealed drawers or cases. I like the new pyrethroids, but keep in touch with museums to be sure you know the best current means of protection. Grease from pinned insects has caused me less of a problem than Browne describes, but possibly that is because I always have used the high-pinning techniques, never having known any other.

* When it comes to setting insects Browne was no doubt very artistic and very competent at producing a presentable specimen no matter what, but some of his procedures for cheerfully snipping insects and re-assembling them should be avoided. Such expedients could ruin specimens intended for the use of professional entomologists. For the requirements of biological studies, it is far more important to have a fully genuine specimen, no matter how badly disfigured, than a hopefully reconstructed mosaic, no matter how artistic. For some purposes one could use more radical "relaxing" procedures instead. Browne seems to have used only cool water vapour or sometimes liquid water. Careful application of hot steam can relax most specimens that otherwise could not be re-set. One good trick (Beware of the risks of cuts and scalding if your apparatus should burst!) is to boil water in a closed vessel, leading the steam out into a tube, preferably of silicone rubber, tipped with a drawn glass tube or the blunted needle of a syringe. Direct steam at the parts that need relaxing. With practice you often can relax legs or wings one at a time, stopping as soon as they reach the desired position.

* Note too, that Browne is cheerful about mounting some insects by gumming their feet (tarsi) to card. For entomological purposes this has severe disadvantages. Nowadays professionals hardly ever use any means of setting that prevent one from examining a specimen from all sides. Even mounting them on a transparent material tends to interfere with proper examination. For most purposes pin the insects using what Browne called "flat" setting, high on the pin, with the label beneath. Where this is not practical, such as for tiny specimens, there are other methods, which you may see described in manuals or used in museums.

* Note: Browne wrote in pre-decimal days, using largely the so-called Imperial units. This might raise difficulties in understanding his quantities. E.g. his dram or drachm (drm) probably was 0.125 ounce (roughly 3.5 grams). His pound would be sixteen ounces (oz.) of 28.35 grams, but his pint would be twenty fluid ounces (not 16 as in American pints!) Correspondingly his gallon would be ten pounds, not eight. A grain would be about 65 mg. Of other units and utensils apparently common in Browne's day, such as "six-pound Australian meat tins", or "goffering-irons", make what sense you may. A "wine-bottleful" was probably about 700 cc.

* Note: I have had little use for hexavalent chrome compounds but one thing I did notice in experimenting with a few of Browne's recommendations ("bichromates", "chromic acid" etc), is that the merest few drops of such compounds (typically as a solution of potassium dichromate or chromate) added to water containing soft creatures such as molluscs, generally will kill them gently by paralysis and leave them relaxed. Usually almost anything else one uses, short of illegal or expensive drugs, causes such specimens to distort or contract into useless lumps. Once the chromate has thoroughly killed and relaxed them, say after an hour or two, the specimens can be fixed, preserved, or manipulated as required. You may wish to compare this method with the method that I describe for killing molluscs with boiled water.

* One effective way of killing molluscs, particularly gastropods, snails and the like, whether terrestrial, freshwater or marine, in fully extended form, is to put them into cool or barely lukewarm, freshly-boiled water that has been kept closely covered in airtight containers for cooling without permitting a lot of oxygen to re-dissolve in the water. First rinse the live specimens in fresh water to clean away superficial dirt and slime, then submerge them in the de-oxygenated water. Place some sort of grid or other barrier to ensure that they cannot get near the surface, and re-seal the container to keep air out. Leave them for at least twenty-four hours before transferring them to a preservative fluid or otherwise proceeding to deal with them. This method leaves them fully extended and firm, ready for dissection or for preservation for display. If you remove them too soon, they at first seem dead, but contract say, when a scalpel stimulates a still-living nerve.

* The cyanide bottle for killing insects certainly could be very useful, though I am not certain how widely such a dangerous substance would be available nowadays. Many forms of killing bottle have been used in the last century or so, and several are described in many handbooks. An old favourite handbook of mine is the British Museum Instructions to Collectors (Insects). Most killing bottles depend on some volatile liquid soaked into plaster, rubber or cotton wool. My own favourite was ethyl acetate, which is safe, inoffensive, and has several advantages, as long as the bottle and fluid are kept free from moisture. For some reason the presence of water seems to reduce its effectiveness at quickly immobilising specimens. Dry ethyl acetate paralyses most insects very quickly, even if it takes longer to kill them. For example, unlike many popular components of killing bottles, ethyl acetate leaves dead specimens relaxed.

* When you have treated wet specimens with anything acid, do remember to neutralise the acid residues as soon as possible. The same applies if you have preserved them with anything that gradually produces acid; For example, formaldehyde gradually reacts with oxygen to produce formic acid. In due course it destroys shells, and even fine bones and teeth. As a buffer, ammonia is cheap, effective and safe in reasonable circumstances. However, it is too volatile to be a reliable buffer against long term acidity. Specimens preserved in formaldehyde can be protected in the long term by adding hexamethylenetetramine (otherwise known as hexamine, the product of ammonia and formaldehyde) to the liquid. A practical proportion is to add 100 grams of hexamine to a litre of concentrated formaldehyde solution (formalin). Dilute this solution before use, according the requirements of your particular application. If you cannot get hexamine, you can use strong ammonia (about 36%) solution, about 150 ml to 1 litre of formalin. In preparing to use such formalin, allow for the fact that in adding the ammonia you diluted the formalin by about one sixth. Alternatively, though usually less effectively, you could add some ammonium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate to the container. Sometimes a little oyster-shell grit or chalk will do for long-term buffering; it can be used together with the hexamine and can go on working after the hexamine is exhausted if the collection is poorly maintained. Use your good sense in adapting your measures to your needs.

THE END