MIDLAND NATURALIST. 85 
Hints on Collecting and Growing Algae for Class 
Work. 
J. A. NIEUWLAND. 
A great deal of worry and trouble is usually anticipated by the 
teacher in obtaining cryptogamic material for classes of botany. 
During the past few years I have received so many requests from 
high school instructors regarding methods of procuring such 
plants, that I thought it advisable to outline briefly some general 
and particular methods that may be of help to the teacher. Neces- 
sarily many of the hints here given will be well known to the 
algologist, but the average instructor in botanical technique may 
not have had the time and opportunity to acquire experience which 
to the expert is likely to seem commonplace. Many, apparently 
even experienced instructors, well acquainted with the higher 
plants, I have found confess that they are unable to obtain the 
most common and ordinary forms of the lower plants. 
As a matter of fact it is not especially difficult to obtain or 
even grow the lower plants, and most of them once gotten are 
easier to keep a long time than the phanerogams. There is re- 
quired, of course, a certain knowledge of the habits and methods 
under which the development of algae proceeds best, but with a 
little experience, acquired only by patient reiterated efforts at 
growing such, their response to attempts at cultivation will soon 
be surprisingly gratifying. 
Our common text-books and even systematic treatises do not 
give us much help in growing such plants, and for the most part 
do not even state clearly the habitat of the same. Nothing is said 
about the cultivation of lower plants in the laboratory. The object 
of this article, then, is to supply in a limited way, some hints for 
obtaining and growing the common types of algae, from the field or 
laboratory aquarium. 
Here, more than in any other undertaking experience, often 
fraught with failure is the best instructor and guide, but as it is 
also true that most teachers have not even the right idea how to 
make a start, I shall feel repaid if I can hope that some, at least, 
will realize as the result of these few hints that it is worth while to 
make the attempt even though many failures result. A few suc- 
