46 AQUATIC MICROSCOPY FOR BEGINNERS. 



But he should remember that by lifting them out of 

 the water many of the slightly adherent creatures 

 which 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 convenient 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 vessel. 

 If the latter, however, is not accessible, the plants 

 may be gently pushed into the bottle, after it has been 

 partly submerged so that it lies parallel with the sur- 

 face of the water. 



Many of our. most abundant aquatic plants have no 

 common English names, probably because most of 

 them bear the smallest and least showy flowers of all 

 blooming plants, and for that reason fail to attract the 

 attention of the ordinary observer. In referring to 

 them, the beginner 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 Lemna, as a word, is prettier and more 

 appropriate than "duckweed," an ugly term and mean- 

 ingless, because ducks have nothing to do with the 

 plant. 



If the reader is not already, familiar with the appear- 

 ance of the following forms, he need have no trouble 



