

COLLECTING, DRYING AND MOUNTING OF SPECIMENS I95 



of the plants on their sheets according to the laws of the beautiful. 

 The writer used for years to exchange with a renowned institution. 

 Its plants were widely above reproach and of the most desirable 

 quality. I made their mounting esthetically correct, and the 

 result was a set of specimens unsurpassed and perhaps unequalled 

 by any other set of its ilk in the whole world. Later it was my 

 good luck to acquire a set mounted at home before it left the insti- 

 tution. The preparation of the plants themselves evidently showed 

 the master's hand, but their arrangement on the sheets was un- 

 expectedly and astonishingly faulty. In a number of instances 

 they had been crowded in the corner of the sheet, many of them 

 were laid in a pile and held in place by a strip of plaster like a 

 bouquet of flowers, and other specimens had their peripheral parts 

 extending outside of the sheet margins, leaving them utterly unpro- 

 tected against mechanical injuries. The mounting hand had not 

 been governed by a spirit impressed with a sense for the beautiful. 



Three decades of building up an herbarium have been fruitful 

 to me with varied experiences. When exchanging I used to suggest 

 to my correspondents three rules: (1) The specimens ought to 

 retain their natural colors as truly as possible; (2) they ought to 

 have all the parts laid out and expanded with a painstaking ac- 

 curacy; and (3) the sheets ought to be filled. Most responded 

 lavishly, and some even sent me more beautiful specimens than 

 they kept for their own herbaria. A few persisted tenaciously in 

 transmitting poor material, and as a last resort I returned to them 

 specimens prepared according to their own methods. This helped, 

 and at last I had all "trained." All had only acceptable material 

 to offer me. 



Poor specimens were kept by me only temporarily, until I 

 had acquired better ones, and I exchanged certain plants dozens 

 of times until I finally had a good specimen of each. 



The effects of these procedures on my herbarium are easily 

 understood. There exist numerous herbaria exceeding mine in their 

 numbers of specimens, but none outrivals or equals it in the beauty 

 of the entire collection ! In the heat of disputes I have often been 

 called a "crank," but the opposition has always turned in my favor. 



I trust that the reader of these lines will pardon me for express- 

 ing a deeper interest in aforesaid topics than he perhaps considers 

 them deserving. 



Leeds, North Dakota. 



