'Now,' I replied.

This seemed to please him, and with an energetic 'Very well!' he
reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol.

'Take this fish,' said he, 'and look at it; we call it a haemulon; by
and by I will ask what you have seen.'

With that he left me, but in a moment returned with explicit
instructions as to the care of the object entrusted to me.

'No man is fit to be a naturalist,' said he, 'who does not know how to
take care of specimens.'

I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally
moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always taking care to
replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground-glass
stoppers and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students
will recall the huge neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax
-besmeared corks, half eaten by insects, and begrimed with cellar dust.
Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example of
the Professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the jar
to produce the fish, was infectious; and though this alcohol had 'a
very ancient and fishlike smell,' I really dared not show any aversion
within these sacred precincts, and treated the alcohol as though it
were pure water. Still I was conscious of a passing feeling of
disappointment, for gazing at a fish did not commend itself to an
ardent entomologist. My friends at home, too, were annoyed, when they
discovered that no amount of eau-de-Cologne would drown the perfume
which haunted me like a shadow.