of Edinhurgh, Session 1S80-81. xlvii 



or not, be siire to write on a label where and when you found 

 them, and under what circumstances of altitude, aspect, surface, 

 and company, and attach it to the stalk of the plant as you lay 

 it in. 



"VVe will now suppose your season's collection to be completed, 

 named, and labelled, and to consist of, say, 500 species, and two 

 specimens of each ; one exhibiting the flowers, and the other the 

 fruit. You would know the best way to put them up for preserva- 

 tion in the herbarium. In Germany the specimens are generally 

 laid loose inside a sheet of cartridge paper, and in this state they are 

 more easily examined, but in the hands of careless people are apt to 

 be disarranged. In England they are almost always attached to the 

 paper, either glued to it or strapped down with strips of glued 

 paper. This last way is perhaps the best in a private collection, as 

 it allows the specimen to be detached for examination or replaced 

 with a better one. At the British ]\Iuseum and at Kew they are 

 glued down, and may thus be readily consulted, and are not liable 

 to be mismatched or stolen ; but it is only one surface of a plant 

 that can be seen. To make the strips, tack down a sheet of paper 

 upon a board with pins or tintacks at the edges, and paint it all 

 over thickly with glue. Let it dry, and keep it between paper, in 

 or under a large book. It is otherwise apt to curl up. When you 

 are going to fix your specimens, have a sponge filled with hot water 

 upon a soup plate, and lay the strips with the paper side downward 

 upon it, and as the glue melts, take them up with a pair of forceps 

 and strap down the stalks of your plants with them. Stick on the 

 labels immediately under the specimens, and write the name in full 

 on the right hand lower corner of the sheet they are fixed on. This 

 done, enclose the several genera in wliole sheets of a jDaper of a 

 different colour, write the name of the genus outside, and tie them 

 up tight in portfolios. 



If you mix specimens from other herbaria with your own, it is 

 safer, as a precaution against insects, to wash them over with a 

 camel's hair brush dipped in a strong solution of corrosive sublimate 

 in spirits of wine. As an additional precaution, lock up your col- 

 lection in cabinets made to close tight, and keep them in a dry 

 room ; and j ndging from my own herbarium, I may say that, once 

 well dried in the way recommended above, and kept dry, the plants 

 are as perfect, and retain their colours nearly as vivid at the end of 

 five-and-twenty or thirty years, as on the day they were laid within 

 it. To save the beginner from disappointment, it is as well to tell 

 him that light blues and pinks always fade into a dirty white, let 



