26 Canadian Record of Science. 
ginally designed to enable a sample to be collected at any 
required depth with the same safety and precision as at the 
surface, but as it also fulfils all the precautions for collect- 
ing samples in general and saves one the necessity of re- 
peatedly plunging one’s arm into the water, I employ it 
whenever a sample is to be collected from an open body of 
water. In securing samples by hand from a stream I was 
previously under the necessity of either securing the ser- 
vices of a boat or else taking the sample from off the bank, 
with the great chance that in the latter case the shallow water 
near the shore might not be typical of the general body of 
the stream. But from this apparatus, which can be lowered 
into the water from a bridge, or by a rod, much more uni- 
form results are obtained. 
As the apparatus left little to be desired, as far as regards 
the rapidity and safety with which the act of collecting is 
performed, it only remained necessary to ensure the necks of 
the bottles against contamination previous to using them. 
Instead of using sterilized rubber caps for each bottle, a 
constant source of trouble and annoyance, I had a tin box 
made which holds forty bottles at once, each kept in posi- 
tion by cross partitions of tin. ‘The bottles are numbered 
serially, before sterilizing, by writing in pencil upon the 
ground glass of the stopper, and by noting where each 
bottle is used the use of labels is unnecessary. Instead 
of a simple lid, the cover of the box is a tray four inches 
deep, in which a lump of ice is placed in warm weather. 
A small tube at one of the corners of this tray conducts 
the water away as fast as the ice melts. I find this 
keeps the temperature within the box below 8° C., even in 
the hottest weather. A handle across the tray serves to 
carry the box, and a small padlock in front guards it 
against an ever too inquisitive public. 
Though I have not yet had cause to use it for this pur- 
pose, I think that my box, with its lump of ice on top, 
would form a better means of sending samples of water by 
express than any I have seen recommended. The temper- 
ature is kept down to a point where no increase of the 
