xliv Proceedinfjs of the L'otanical Society. 



vaaculum ; or if you are not provided with one, get a tin candle box, 

 wliicli you may Luy or borrow in almost any country village. Take 

 also a portfolio with about twenty or thirty sheets of any strong 

 paper in it. As soon as your vasculum is full, sit down and empty 

 it out, and lay such specimens as arc best worth keeping into the 

 portfolio. This you may have to do four or five times in the day. 

 Let the man who accompanies you carry the vasculum on one side 

 and the portfolio on the other, by straps over the shoulders ; but 

 yourself carry nothing but a knife with a very strong blade, about 

 9 inches long, 2 inches broad, and a quarter of an inch thick, 

 fixed into a wooden handle, and traversing the whole length of it, 

 suspended in a sheath from the waist. Such a knife is of use, not 

 only for digging up plants and lopping boughs, but may serve you 

 as a step in scaling walls and rocks, and should therefore be made 

 of the best steel. Never carry an alpenstock. An oak walking- 

 stick with a crook to it is often useful for pulling down branches of 

 trees ; but to speak from my own experience of mountain climbing, 

 an alpenstock on a botanical excursion is only fit for young ladies 

 and town-bred young gentlemen who go up the Eigi. 



Upon your return home, or early the next morning, transfer the 

 plants from the portfolio to dry paper. Any that has much size in 

 it is unfit for the purpose, and blotting-paper takes out their colour. 

 You cannot have a better than the shojDkeepers' whitey-broAvn. 

 Lay one of your plants, or, if the species is a small one, two or three 

 or twenty plants within a sheet of this, fold it down upon them, and 

 lay it upon a pad of five or six sheets of a bibulous paper to absorb 

 the moisture, and another pad upon it; then another sheet of 

 plants upon that, and another pad alternately. The best paper for 

 these pads is that which is made expressly for botanists, and called 

 " Bentall." It is sold by Mr Edward Newman, 32 Eotolph Lane, 

 Eastcheap, London, E.G. Get ten reams of it, the smaller size 

 (except for botanizing in a tropical country), and one ream of the 

 whitey-brown, and have this cut to the size of the Bentall. Pro- 

 cure also of the same size twenty-four pieces of very strong thick 

 mill-board, and two or three pairs of wooden boards, each board 

 made of two thinner ones laid transversely the one upon the other, 

 and glued together and screwed round the edges. Or you may 

 have pieces of mill-board glued upon boards of poplar, wliich I have 

 found to answer the purpose just as well, and you can make them 

 yourself as you want them. Lastly, get a pair of straps and 

 buckles for each pair of boards, the straps of very strong Avebbing, 

 about a yard and a half or two yards long. 



