ON BLEACHING AND WASHING MICROSCOPICAL SECTIONS. 



55 



pists generally. So far as the writer is aware the method is quite 

 original, but as '' there is nothing new under the sun," it is by no 

 means improbable that the same idea may have occurred to others. 

 For carrying out the plan, the apparatus required is simple in the 

 extreme. All that is required is (1) two small wide-necked 

 bottles — those in which chemists sell one ounce of Citrate of Iron 

 and Quinine are very suitable ; (2) perfectly sound corks accurately 

 fitting the bottles ; (3) six or eight inches of quill glass tubing ; 

 (4) some shellac varnish. By mean of a cork-borer or rat-tail file 

 a hole is to be made through the centre of each cork just large 

 enough to grasp tightly the quill tubing. With the aid of a spirit 

 lamp the tube is to be bent at right angles at each end, as shown 

 in Fig. 1. The two arms are not to be of equal length — one 

 should be about one inch and the other about two inches and a half. 

 These arms must now be passed through the holes in the corks, and 

 the corks themselves then made air-tight by a liberal application of 

 the shellac varnish. A notch having been cut in the edge of the 

 cork carrying the longest arm of the glass tube, the apparatus 

 shewn in Fig. 1 is complete. 



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To use it, proceed as follows : — About three parts fill the bottle 

 A with filtered rain water, and to this transfer the sections to be 

 bleached. Into bottle B put a sufficient quantity of crystals of 

 chlorate of potash just to cover the bottom, and upon them pour a 

 drachm or so of strong hydrochloric acid. Fit in the corks, taking 

 care that the one carrying the long arm of glass tube be applied to 

 the bottle containing the sections. linmediately the yellow vapour 



