[NHCOLL-L:5874] RE: Curation Tactic Inquiries

[Kools, Elizabeth]

Hi Kathy,


It looks like it may be Hollande's solution and I note the label reads "just Holl."



The green coloration would come from the cupric acetate; picric acid is also in the recipe.


--Liz

Elizabeth Kools
Curatorial Assistant, Invertebrates
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA  94118-4503  USA

ekools at calacademy.org
415.379.5223  Voice
415.379.5732  Fax

Collection Database:
http://research.calacademy.org/research/izg/iz_coll_db/index.asp
Let the wonder begin. Explore an aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum all under one living roof.


From: owner-nhcoll-l at lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-nhcoll-l at lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Phyllis Sun
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 4:46 PM
To: NHCOLL-L at lists.yale.edu
Subject: [NHCOLL-L:5870] Curation Tactic Inquiries

HERE YOU GOOOOOOO


Greetings,

My name is Kathy and I'm a curatorial manager at the Natural History Museum of LA County at the Marine Biodiversity Center. While going through and re-curating older sections of our collections, I ran across two rather odd occurrences and am seeking some advice.

The first is this bright lime green solution in a number of jars preserving specimens. At first, I thought it might be Bouins, but Bouins tends to be more yellow based while this is radioactive green. Does anybody have any idea what liquid is being used? Perhaps Bouins mixed with something? The data on the jars are not that informative, only containing either a station number or species name. Some specimens found have been zooplankton, parasitic isopods, and euphausiid frags, but there's no real pattern. A picture of one of the jars is attached.

My second question regards sponges. We had a visiting scientist did some research work on some sponges we have. He separated the spicules entirely from the sponge and preserved them in a tiny 2mL plastic screw-top vials. The vials contain only the spicules themselves, no tissue at all. The problem is the alcohol levels recedes rather quickly in the 2mL vials and I'm wary of putting them in a cotton-stopped glass vials since there's a chance the spicules will get stuck in the cotton. Does anybody know of a better procedure?

Please let me know, I'd appreciate any help or advice.

Best,

Kathy Omura



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