“The anatomist should watch over these macerations; and it is only when all the fibrous parts separate easily from the bones, or the inter-vertebral fibro-cartilages, and the yellow ligaments separate readily from the vertebra, that the skeleton should be withdrawn from the bath and cleaned. For this purpose, he collects with care all the pieces, and places them in clean water; he cleans them by removing with a scalpel the fibrous parts which may yet adhere, and by rubbing them under water with a very coarse brush; he then places them on coarse linen to dry them. “_Ebullition._--Boiling water is often resorted to for preparing the bones of the skeleton. After having roughly separated them from the soft parts, they are placed in a kettle of water, and subjected to ebullition for six or ten hours, according to the subject. The action of the water is increased, and the fibrous parts more accurately stripped from the bones, as well as the grease, by placing in the kettle, an hour before the end of the operation, potash, or soda of commerce, (sub-carbonate of potash, and of soda,) one pound to eighty or a hundred pints of liquid. After having carefully removed the grease which swims on the surface of the water, the bones are to be withdrawn and plunged into a new alkaline lie, warm and very weak; clean them with care, as in the preceding case, separating exactly from the articular surfaces, the swollen and softened cartilages, which remain adhering to them: the bones being clean, they are to be washed frequently previously to drying. “In employing ebullition, we have the advantage of preparing the bones more promptly, and in a manner less insalubrious than by maceration. Nevertheless, this mode of preparation has its inconvenience: 1. Bones which are boiled, become, in general, less white than those which are macerated; the blood coagulating in their pores, leaves a brown tinge, which it is often impossible to remove; 2. They commonly retain a greater quantity of medullary matter, which, by becoming rancid, soon gives them a yellow colour and a very disagreeable odour; 3. Ebullition is not applicable to the bones of young subjects, in which the epiphyses are not yet adherent; it acts upon their gelatinous texture, and despoils, in part, the short bones and the extremities of the long bones of the compact layer which envelopes them. This last inconvenience is manifested even in the bones of adults.