356 The Microscope. 



together at random. Probably nearly every one would enter 

 things pertaining to animals at the top of the page, vegetables in 

 the middle and minerals at the bottom, or vice versa. A specialist 

 in any department would give the lion's share of the page to his 

 particular province, subdivided to suit himself; and the vegetable 

 kingdom, being in the middle, could be carried up or down, where 

 experience shows that room could best be spared. After such 

 entries as starch, pollen, hair, etc., several lines would be left blank 

 for similar items, so that ultimately these items would appear in 

 blocks that would be instantly recognized on glancing at the page. 

 In larger collections, where sa included many pages, a certain 

 number of these whole pages would be assigned to animal, vege- 

 table and mineral objects respectively. In this case a botanist, for 

 instance, would probably reserve more pages for plants than for all 

 the rest, and at first he might devote a column, or even a whole 

 page to such a group as starches, and a like portion of se to seeds, 

 one column of the seed page being given to whole seeds, and 

 another to sections, etc. Subsequently, if too much space proved 

 to have been reserved, anywhere, the lower portion of the vacant 

 parts would be filled with other things. By such expedients a 

 rough but most useful working classification of the pages and their 

 contents can be maintained until the book is nearly full. The 

 accompanying sample page of sa entries of familiar objects, though 

 much more crowded, and therefore less satisfactory, than in actual 

 use, shows how such a plan is carried out, and with what facility 

 any object may be found in a collection of three or foui' thousand 

 slides. 



Obviously the catch- word by which an entry will be found is 

 its first word, by which it was located and sought for ; and the other 

 most characteristic word, which distinguishes the item from others 

 of its kind, and which may or may not be the only other word, 

 may be underlined for easy recognition. The writer uses pencils of 

 different colors for this pux'pose, in the serial list as well as in the 

 Index, red for animal, green for vegetable, and blue for mineral 

 specimens, and thus gains a perspicuity whose value is evident. 

 By a little extra care in labeling the slides, the same distinction of 

 color may be extended to the labels, using red, green and blue tinted 

 papers, or white paper with printed borders of those colors, as a 

 means for rapidly recognizing and distributing the slides themselves 

 whenever they have become mixed in use. 



