48 MICROSCOPY FOR BEGINNERS. 



them out of the water very many of the creatures he 

 most desires will be washed away. The plants should 

 be slowly and carefully drawn to the shore, and lifted 

 out in a tin dipper and poured into a wide -mouthed 

 bottle. The small tin dipper will prove a very conven- 

 ient implement for all kinds of microscopical collecting, 

 as a handle of any length can be made by thrusting a 

 stick into the hollow handle of the dipper. If the lat- 

 ter, however, is not accessible, the plants may be gently 

 pushed into the bottle, after it has been partly sunk so 

 that it lies parallel with the surface of the water. 



Many of our commonest aquatic plants have no com- 

 mon English names, probably because most of them 

 bear the smallest and least showy flowers of all bloom- 

 ing plants, and therefore do not attract the attention of 

 the ordinary observer. In referring to them, the begin- 

 ner must use the scientific names, or learn the meaning 

 of the Latin words and use the translation, usually with 

 awkward results. It sounds better and is quite as easy 

 to speak of Myriophyllum as of the " thousand-leaved 

 plant," which the word means. Many plants might be 

 styled thousand-leaved; another common aquatic one, 

 for instance, which often grows in the same pond with 

 Myriophyllum, the Ceratophyllum, called "hornwort" 

 because the leaves are rather stiff and horny ; and Lem- 

 na, as a word, is prettier and more appropriate than 

 "duckmeat," an ugly term and meaningless, because 

 ducks have nothing to do with the plant. 



If the reader is not already familiar with the appear- 



