FLORA OF WASHINGTON AND VICINITY. 233 



in self-protection, for unless you send good labels they will not be affixed 

 to your specimens and you will not get credit for them; or, if affixed, 

 they will remain a j)ermanent reproach to you and your methods of 

 working. To avoid extra labor, it is better to have blank labels printed 

 with everything except the name and date. If you have rare plants in 

 quantity to distribute, it is well to have the whole label i^rinted for such. 

 In a few years you will find that you will have several different kinds 

 of duplicates for which a single blank will no longer answer, and you 

 will want two or three kinds of blanks ; e. g., one for your local plants, 

 with the locality and your own name as collector printed; one for plants 

 collected elsewhere by yourself, with your name printed but the locality 

 left blank, and one for duplicates received from other botanists who 

 have wrongly neglected to send labels. For these last yon should give 

 credit to the true collector in a blank space for his name, but take credit 



for the specimen by having the words " Ex Herb. (your own name)" 



printed over the top of the labels used for these cases. Where flowers 

 and fruit are collected at different dates, this should be stated on the 

 label, and there should be a package of blank labels with two lines for 

 dates to be employed in such cases. If all are so i^rinted, one of the 

 lines will in most cases be left blank, which looks incomplete, and it is 

 best to have most of the labels with only one line for date. 



The process of "getting out" duplicates for exchange will then con- 

 sist in the following steps : 



Your correspondent's list of desiderata lies before you and you look at 

 the first name. If he is a methodical worker it will be the one nearest 

 the beginning of the natural system and nearest the head of your dujili- 

 cates. You take out the package (all the i)lants in that partition) and 

 place it on the table, find the genus or species wanted, as the case may 

 be, on your genus or species slips, and take up and lay aside all above 

 it ; you then select your specimen, copy the name, date, etc., from the 

 temporary to the permanent label, and place the plant and label on a 

 separate sheet of paper, where you desire to build up the exchange 

 package. The bottom of this package, of course, consists of a piece of 

 paste-board and the specimens are placed on papers (newspaper) of con- 

 venient size. Some botanists use for this purpose an^- old torn scrap of 

 paper or small irregular bits. Tbis is not to be recommended, as it tends 

 to pile up the j)lants too much in the middle and bend and injure the 

 specimens. This is x)robably done for economy in postage, but this ob- 

 ject can be almost as effectually secured while using papers of a uniform 



