586 PRESERVATIONT OF 



which appears to he an effort of the living prin- 

 ciple, for it is prevented by immersion of the fresh 

 specimen in boiling water. Nandina domestical a Jap- 

 anese shrub, lately infroduced among us by Lady 

 A. Hume and Mr. Evans of Stepney, is very remark- 

 able in this respect. Every leaflet of its very com- 

 pound leaves separates from its stalk in drying, and 

 even those stalks all fall to pieces at their joints. 



Dried specimens are best preserved by being fas- 

 tened, with weak carpenter's glue, to paper, so that 

 they may be turned over without damage. Thick 

 and heavy stalks requiie the additional support of a 

 fcvv transverse strips of paper, to bind them more 

 firmly down. A half sheet, of a convenient folio size, 

 should be allotted to each species, and all the species 

 of a genus may be placed in one or mote whole sheets. 

 On the latter the name of the genus should external- 

 ly be written, while the name of every species, with 

 its place of growth, time of gathering, the finder's 

 name, or any other concise piece of information, may 

 be inscribed on its appropriate paper. This is the 

 plan of the Linnaean Herbarium, in which every spe- 

 cies, which its original possessor had before him when 

 he wrote his great work the Species Flanfarum, is 

 numbered both in pencil and in ink, as well as nam- 

 ed, the former kind of numbers having been tempo- 

 rary till the book to which they refer was printed, af- 

 ter which they were confirmed with a pen, and a co- 

 py of the book, now also in my hands, was marked 

 in reference to them. Here therefore we do not de- 

 pend on the opinion merely, even of Linnasns, for we 



