BIRMINGHAM MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 291 
whom it is already familiar in describing my own collecting case. 
It is a light leathern box, about r2in. x 6in. x 4¥%in., with smooth 
handle attached, having twelve or more thin wooden partitions in- 
side arranged for holding a variety of bottles and other things 
necessary for the purpose. 
When complete, it contains four bottles holding about four 
ounces each, one smaller with a screwed neck for attaching it 
readily to the pond-stick, and ten, or more, made from glass tubing 
about 3'%in. long by 3in. diameter, all being numbered and 
having corks attached by string. 
material used by ladies, I am told, for the purpose of wool-work— 
a still finer net of muslin, which will slip over it easily, making the 
one screwed ring do for both, and being of great use when the 
specimens sought are too small for the coarser net. <A cutting 
hook also, to screw to the stick ; a small grapnel or four-pronged 
hook, made of soft copper wire, about as thick as a straw (or “ No. 
9, B.W.G.”), cast together by means of lead or soft solder, with a 
few inches of brass chain attached, weighing about eight ounces 
altogether. 
Then a plaited flaxen or cotton line, which will not gnarl when 
wet, of fifty or sixty yards in length, and sufficiently strong to stand 
a considerable pull, enough even to straighten the soft hook, and so 
_eet it free should it meet with wood or any hard substance in the 
water which renders it fast. 
A little practice with this apparatus will enable one with a fairly 
strong arm to throw, or rather sling, it out and gather aquatic 
plants from a large area, fifty or sixty yards even from any favour- 
able spot for “paying” out the line, where it will meet with no 
obstacles when running out. 
Then a long test-tube, and one or two pipettes, a pair of long 
forceps, a flat ‘trough, and a “condenser,” or contrivance of some 
kind for filtering out the captures, complete the contents of my 
case under ordinary circumstances. 
How much importance I attach to the use of proper apparatus 
may be gathered from the fact that I attribute the non-discovery of 
Leptodora before 1879, not to its non-existence in our locality, but 
to the want of a suitable net properly used, these creatures escaping 
through a net too rough, and being unnoticeable, owing to their 
extreme delicacy on the one hand, ‘and the quantity of “alga they 
are usually taken with on the other, when a net too fine in the 
mesh is used. 
It is quite true that the first one I obtained from Olton reservoir 
was taken by dipping an inverted bottle to a considerable depth, 
and then by a quick turn allowing the water to rush in; but I have 
often repeated the experiment where these creatures are fairly 
