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SOME NOTES ON SEEDS AS MICROSCOPIC 



OBJECTS. 



By N. E. Brown. 



{Read Ajjril 2oth, 1911.) 



The following notes are written in the hope that they may prove 

 of interest to those who are on the look-out for what are 

 popularly termed "good objects." 



Possibly many who read this will have limited their examina- 

 tion of seeds more or less to the lists of genera given in the 

 Micrographic Dictionary and elsewhere, without having any idea 

 of the many elegant kinds that are not mentioned. Among 

 those enumerated in such lists are some that are decidedly worth 

 preserving as objects of beauty, but there are many others that 

 seem to me of very ordinary pretensions and scarcely worth the 

 trouble of mounting. Those I am about to mention, however, 

 will be found to be either really attractive or interesting on 

 account of their form and structure, and all of them worth the 

 trouble of preserving. A few may be familiar to some micro- 

 scopists, but to the majority, I believe, they are not well known. 

 Some of them can be easily obtained, others will be much more 

 difficult to procure, because in some cases the plants are only 

 cultivated where a large general collection is grown ; in others, 

 as in the case of the magnificent golden seeds of Picrorhiza 

 Kurrooa, they are only occasionally introduced and the plant 

 soon dies out of cultivation, often without ripening seed, so that 

 they must be procured as opportunity offers, A few of them 

 have never been introduced into cultivation, and must be 

 obtained from botanical friends residing in their native country. 



In preparing and exhibiting them, I find that I get the best 

 results by the following method. I mount them in cells, dry, on 

 clear glass slips, not on a dark background, fixing them with a 

 minute speck of seccotine or gum ; if the latter, I proceed by 

 brushing a thin layer of it upon a piece of card or paper, then, 

 holding the seed in a pair of fine forceps, just let it touch the 

 gummed surface and transfer it to its place on the slide. If they 

 are mounted in balsam or other medium I consider their beauty 

 is much deteriorated. For illuminating them, I prefer incan- 

 descent gaslight, as that from a lamp is not sufficient to ^ive 



JouRN. Q. M. C, Series II. No. 69. 21 



