32 ERYTIIEA. 



they are soaked out, they may be pressed in a plant press after the 

 fashion of the coarser flowering plants, except that instead of the 

 thin papers between which n)ost of the flowering plants are pressed, 

 the coarse alga niust be pressed between pieces of cloth. Fairly 

 coarse, thin cheese cloth will do very well or old linen or muslin 

 that has done service for sheets or pillow-cases. It is important 

 thi\i there should be as little starch as possible in these clothe. 

 The drying paper used may be the ordinary coarse sheathing paper 

 such as is used for flowering plants and which can be obtained from 

 any dealer in botanical supplies, or it may be sheets of fine white 

 blotting pajier. The latter is much more expensive and has little 

 advantage over the other. The driers should be changed once a 

 day at least and twice a day is far better, especially at first while 

 the specimens are still moist. If these specimens are large and 

 tliick, they may dry very slowly, so slowly in fact that they are in 

 danger of, or perhaps actually do begin to mold. In that case, 

 the writer dips them in alcohol or even in a solution of corrosive 

 sublimate in alcohol, such as is used to poison flowering plants 

 before incorporating them into the herbarium. The solution may 

 be poured into a large shallow dish and the alga dipped into it 

 several times if it is especially large. The alcohol helps to remove 

 the water froiu the specimen and consequently assists the drying 

 process, while the corrosive sublimate inhibits the growth of the 

 molds. The finer S2)ecie3, lacking the rigidity of the coarser forms 

 must be floated out in water, the cards or sheets of paper brought 

 under them, and then card and specimen lifted from the water in 

 such a way that the seaweed is left spread out upon the card after 

 the fashion in which it grows. The writer finds it most expedient 

 to describe his own method of procedure with fine fipecimeus. 



The material, whether fresh, from salt, or just soaked out, must 

 Hrst be sorted, for it is generally either of several species mixed 

 together or of several specimens of the same species mixed together. 

 I use deep crockery baking dishes, which, while yellow outside, are 

 white inside. They are rectangular and about 10x8 inches at the 

 top (inside measurement) and about 2 inches deep. The plants 

 may be sorted from one of these into the other until they are suffi- 

 ciently separated. For floating out the specimens, I use a method 

 suggested to me liy my friend Mr. Isaac Holden, of Bridgeport, Conn. 



