Hello Ross, As a histologist, I deal with many kinds of tissue fixatives, including methanol and ethanol, and your observation that methanol is inferior to ethanol as a tissue fixative is certainly correct. Unfortunately, the precise reason for this cannot be adequately explained without getting into some rather complex organic chemistry, probably not appropriate to this forum. In brief though - alcohols are classified as denaturant (or precipitant, or coagulant) fixatives, which means that the primary molecular mechanism by which they bring about tissue fixation is denaturation of proteins. This means that these compounds can alter the physical structure or arrangement of protein molecules in ways that render them relatively insoluble and unreactive, thereby in effect "locking them in place". A common example of this is egg albumen (egg white), a liquified protein which, if dropped into strong alcohol, will turn white and solid, just as it does during cooking (heat also causes denaturization of proteins). Anyway, for reasons I can't address here, methanol is a less effective protein denaturant than ethanol, which is why it is a poorer tissue fixative. Methanol is widely used in hematology work, as a blood fixative, where it is desirable to avoid over-denaturation. ............................... Philip, The only way any alcohol (methanol, ethanol, etc.) might "remove" tissue from inside a shell would be by rapidly dehydrating it, causing it to physically contract and harden, so that it might subsequently fall out of the shell as a hardened pellet - if you are lucky. Perhaps that was Dr. Clench's meaning. Or, maybe he just meant that the shriveled up, contracted, odorless tissue pellet was no longer a problem, even if it remained inside the shell. As you observed, there is no reason to expect that methanol would accomplish this any better than ethanol, propanol, or other water-miscible alcohols. Paul M.