I2O Laboratory Arts 



and Dublin, which have a white label with black letters. These 

 do not chip, nor corrode, and after some years' wear are as 

 good as new. All bottles of this type should be protected by 

 a guarantee; the correct bottle can be secured, but there is no 

 way of distinguishing it when new from the bad quality. 



The strong acid, alkali, alcohol, and ether bottles in any 

 laboratory should have such labels, but these are, as a rule, too 

 expensive for use as ordinary reagent bottles, though unques- 

 tionably the best. Bench reagent bottles sometimes have 

 their labels sand-blasted on them, clear letters on a ground 

 surface. These soon become invisible; it is not only a 

 matter of difficulty to read them, but it is very easy even when 

 aware of this difficulty to mistake chloride and carbonate 

 bottles. A third type of label is that where the glass is deeply 

 etched, and some more or less soluble compound filled into 

 the depressions so made. This compound disappears in 

 time, and in any case makes the bottles unsatisfactory in 

 the washing. The transparency of the glass, again, is a 

 point of disadvantage^ and of all these types of label none is 

 so thoroughly satisfactory as the black letters enamelled on 

 white ground. 



For special cases, then, let us have such bottles for strong 

 acids, alkalies and similar liquids which are in constant use ; but 

 there will be numerous bottles to be labelled, which are not 

 listed in this type, and these labels must therefore be supplied 

 in MS. upon gummed blanks. The usual perforated gummed 

 and varnished books of labels are very unsatisfactory, they all 

 must of necessity be alike, and a run upon any special label 

 will thus result in the destruction of a large number of books. 

 Again, the most common of the substances have two or three 

 copies of their label, but these are not usually sufficient the 

 books are made up from the point of view of labelling a 

 newly furnished laboratory, and replacements have not nearly 

 sufficient consideration paid to them. It is the rarest thing to 

 see one of these books even half used quite fifty per cent, of 

 the contents ultimately being wasted. At the same time it is 

 difficult to design a book of labels that would meet the require- 

 ments of every laboratory, for some schools and colleges " run" 



