1902] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 55 
real-estate, lessen doctor’s bills, and increase happiness. 
May we be pardoned one criticism for future use ? The 
text is gotten up in the style of Governmental Reports. 
Every page is cumbered with citations and acknowledge- 
ments to periodicals, writers, officials, etc. A “Report” 
must be. A commercially published book should not be. 
All these authorities should be lumped in an appendix 
with reference numbers in the text. The reader don’t 
care how Dr. Howard knows this or that. It trusts him 
as an authority and wants his conclusions in a compact 
space. The conscientiousness with which Dr. Howard 
credits a thousand observers in an official report, need not 
be carried into a scholarly treatise for popular use. To 
do so mars its interest. 
Sectioning Stems and Leaves of Mosses. 
A handy method of sectioning stems and leaves of mos- 
ses is a desideratum with most working bryologists. The 
one about to be described will be found, with patience 
and practice, to answer the purpose quite well in most 
cases. | | 
Take a strip of heavy writing paper, say # of an inch 
wide and 14 inches long; on the middle of this spread a 
drop of glycerine so as to cover a space about $ an inch 
long and ¢ of aninch wide; put the part to be sectioned 
on this space, the end to the right ; place the paper on the 
stage of a dissecting microscope and clamp it fast; witha 
pair of curved forceps in the left hand to steady the part, 
and with a sharp scalpel in the right, commence the cut- 
ting, watching the process through the lens; when a suf- 
ficient number of sections have been made scrape them 
with the dull blade of a pen-knife to a dry part of the 
paper; if carefully done the sections will adhere to the 
blade, and may be easily transferred to a slide on which 
a drop of water has been placed ; pick out the coarser sec- 
