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Vou. IX. DETROIT, JANUARY, 1889. | No. 1 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
CLEANING RECENT DIATOMACEOUS MATERIAL. 
Fr. W. WEIR. 
responding to a request for description of the method employed 
by myself in cleaning diatoms, I do not claim the merit of 
novelty for the whole or any part of the process, but simply that, in 
its essential features, it is the result of experiment, and is more 
satisfactory than any published method with which I am familiar. 
It is a truth well known to students, that no one can obtain 
from books that which does not already inhere in the student him- 
self. It is equally true, that no method of cleaning diatoms will 
prove successful in the hands of any operator who does not possess 
the essential qualities of infinite patience and perseverance in the 
absence of immediately visible results. 
The preparatory cleaning must, of course, vary with the nature 
of the material. A very poor gathering, requiring a quart or two 
of material to commence with, and consisting chiefly of coarse sand, 
should be placed in a large pail of water and stirred with a very 
rapid rotary motion, allowed to settle a moment, poured off and 
saved. The pail should be again filled with water, contents rotated, 
settled and saved. This process should be repeated until nothing 
but sand remains and until the portion saved is sufficiently concen- 
trated to be suitable for further treatment. If the collection is 
comparatively rich and consists of the usual marsh deposit—fine 
sand, partly decayed animal and vegetable matter, and bits of refuse 
