[.92 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 



plants, like some Silcne, Anogra, etc., ought to be collected whenever 

 the flowers are open : have a portfolio with bihmlous paper ready, and 

 expand the plants quickly between the sheets, applying the needed 

 pressure immediately. This method ought to be used always when 

 plants are incline d to collapse as soon as they are separated from the 

 ground. Delicate parts can thus be satisfactorily and sufficiently 

 expanded at once, when it would require hours to disentangle 

 them when collapsed, for example Capnoides, Papilionaceae, 

 etc., especially their leaves. To make the petals of Alisma 

 subcordatum Raf. discernible after drying, one must insert them 

 carefully between the sheets in the portfolio and apply considerable 

 pressure before digging the plant out of the ground. Aquatic plants 

 to be spread out on paper beneath the surface of the water. 

 To grasses the fibrous root-system is indispensable and ought 

 always to be exhumed, as the separated parts are very undesirable 

 and unseemly. If the collector is a poor swimmer, especially below 

 water, and the water is deep, it is perhaps recommendable to employ 

 a proxy for digging our deep-water plants from the bottom. Dioic- 

 cous plants ought to be represented by staminate and pistillate 

 aments, and in Salices the full-grown leaves, which appear with the 

 winterbuds in the fall, will complete the specimen. Thick plants 

 ought to be thinned with a knife. 



The drying and pressing. Our aim is here to eliminate the 

 third dimension as completely as possible, and the pressure applied 

 merely ought to be short of crushing the parts. The plants already 

 resting in the portfolio ought to be moved with their enveloping 

 sheets into the press, and faulty arrangements, as doubled leaves, 

 petals unsymmetrically disposed, etc., corrected. Plants from the 

 collecting box have to be placed on sheets of paper, and all parts 

 expanded and arranged lege artis in free-standing positions, so that 

 no part is resting on and hiding another. Roots, stems, etc., have 

 to be pared with a knife, in order to equalize the thickness of the 

 specimen through all its parts as much as possible. When the 

 length of the plant exceeds the length of the sheet, the stem has 

 to be bent in an angle not in a curve, this bending to be repeated as 

 many times as needed. In folding, the legs of the angle should 

 come in the same plane, and the legs not allowed to rest one on top 

 of the other at their junction and thus get their thickness doubled. 

 With tall plants commence at a lower corner of the sheet and at 

 the root of the plant, proceed to the upper corner on the same 



