xx DIRECTIONS FOR STUDY. 



equalize the pressure. The number of packets interposed 

 will depend upon the juiciness of the plants, and must be 

 left to your own judgment. When plants are first put in 

 press, the papers should be changed once a day for three 

 or four days, after which every other day will answer. 

 When the drying packets are changed, they should not be 

 left lying upon the floor, but should be dried upon a line 

 stretched across the room, or in the open air. 



At each change of the driers, any further knowledge 

 that has been gained concerning each specimen should be 

 written down, and preserved with it as before. In this way 

 all its features will be observed, and the names denoting 

 them recalled, and by the time they are dried for mount- 

 ing, it will be possible, by the aid of the last schedule of 

 the chapter, to write, upon the paper holding the speci- 

 men, an accurate scientific description of it. Let this be 

 followed by the pressing of entire plants, after compar- 

 ing their different organs with the examples shown in the 

 book. The attention thus drawn to their characters will 

 be kept alive in changing them and caring for them, and 

 the attempt completely to describe them, when dried and 

 mounted, will go far toward fixing in the mind ideas of 

 the forms and structures of the various organs, and the 



terms needed in description. 

 For collecting plants, you 

 w r ill need a small trowel for 

 digging roots, or a large, 

 strong clasp-knife, that will 

 serve both for digging and for 

 cutting branches ; a strong 

 portfolio, from sixteen to 

 twenty inches long, and ten 



FIG. A. -Collector's Portfolio. or twelve inches wide, tied 



with tape or a strong cord. 



It should be made of two stout sheets of pasteboard, sepa- 

 rated at the back (Fig. A), and will be all the better if cov- 



* 



