[Histonet] serra's fix question

[Emily Sours]

We have a protocol for fixing chick embryos in Serra's fix (6 100% ethanol:
3 37% formaldehyde: 1 glacial acetic acid), which states that after fixing
for one to four hours, the tissue should be washed in 60% ethanol then
worked up to xylene.  What I don't understand is placing the embryo into a
water-based wash when it was fixed in a non-water-based solution.  At first
I thought the 37% formaldehyde might have water, but if any water is added
to the Serra's fix, it becomes milky.  Am I missing something here?

Emily
-- 
Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and
somebody actually proposed calling German measles, 'Liberty
measles?'...Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in
obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious
old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world
laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?
--Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, 1935