154: COLLECTING OBJECTS TO 



where shall we proceed iu order to obtain the necessary 

 materials to constitute the stock ? 



You and I, reader, will go to the seashore for wonders to 

 bring home and to place in our crystal prison, and there 

 admire in onr leisure hours. So first, if you please, we will 

 dress ourselves in a rough suit of clothes — never mind if 

 they be a little the worse for wear — we are not going to 

 promenade Broadway, but to walk where nobody is going to 

 look at us, save the sea-nymphs (if we are so fortunate as 

 to stumble on any of those creatures— and when we do, we 

 will bring them home and put them into our Aquarium) ; 

 therefore, let the clothes be old, and the boots be heavy 

 and strong. A hat is apt to blow off, so we will provide 

 ourselves with tight-fitting caps. As for the implements 

 that we intend to take with us, it is all very well for 

 writers to describe complicated zinc-cans and leather-saeh- 

 els, with their various internal arrangements, which can be 

 used on such occasions; but these will be of no 'service to 

 us, who are going to start off at a day's notice and have 

 neither time nor inclination to encumber ourselves with such 

 machinery of action. We'll take with us a basket, con- 

 taining a tin-can, with a cover — it should hold about a gal- 

 lon ; three glass bottles, with wide mouths, holding respec- 

 tively a pint, a quart, and half a gallon — or they may be 

 smaller, if we are cramped for room. I have sometimes 

 found one of the capacity of a quart sufficient, but on this 

 point the collector can judge for himself, after having been 

 out once ; a- geologist's hammer and a stone chisel, one of the 

 kind denominated technically, "cold chisel," having a sharp- 

 cutting steel edge. These implements are indispensable, as 



