Directions fur preserving Sea Plants. 145 



in some rare instances a parasitic species may be thought worthy of 

 keeping, on account of its rarity, or because it may add an additional 

 beauty to the chief specimen. It is a good practice to wash them be- 

 fore leaving the shore either in the sea, or in a rocky pool, or, as is 

 sometimes more convenient in some localities, in a rivulet discharging 

 itself into the ocean, though, as will be afterwards explained, the last 

 practice proves very destructive to the beauty of some species. 



The foreign bodies to be got rid of are fragments of decayed sea- 

 weeds, sand, gravel, and sometimes portions of the softened surface of 

 sandstone or argillaceous rock on which the specimens may have 

 grown, together with the smaller testacea, and the Corallina officinalis, 

 &c. At Cairnlough Bay I experienced most trouble in this respect 

 from the Ectocarpi, which conferva? were so generally diffused, as to 

 be entangled with almost every other species of sea-plant. 



After the greatest pains which we may take to clean our specimens 

 at the shore, there will generally be found much to do before they can 

 be properly committed to paper, since foreign substances will continue 

 attached to them with much pertinacity even after we may have been 

 satisfied that they are perfectly clean. It is therefore necessary to pre- 

 pare each specimen by examining it in fresh or sea water in a white 

 dish or plate, so that every thing foreign may be detected and re- 

 moved. 



The next thing to be attended to is the quality of the paper on 

 which the specimens are to be spread ; and here a great error is gene- 

 rally committed, in using it thin and inferior, by which, if the speci- 

 men be worth preserving, it has not proper justice done to it. Much 

 of the beauty, indeed, of many species depends on the goodness of the 

 paper, exactly as a print or drawing will appear better or worse, as it 

 is executed on paper of a good or an inferior kind. Some species, too, 

 contract so much in drying as to pucker the edges of the paper, if it 

 be not sufficiently thick, for example Delesseria laciniata, and this has 

 a very unsightly appearance. That which I have from experience 

 been led to prefer is a thick music-paper. It closely resembles that 

 used for drawing, and the sheet divides into four leaves, of a most con- 

 venient size, each being about an inch and a-half longer and broader 

 than a leaf of this Magazine. These, again, divided into halves answer 

 for small species, and for large specimens we may use the entire folio. 

 We have thus three regular sizes of paper, and this serves to give a 

 uniformity and neatness to a collection not to be obtained by using- 

 papers at random, and of casual dimensions. 



Whatever pains we may have taken to clean the recent specimens, 

 we shall often find, when spreading them, that some foreign particles 



