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SO ART EP RA ees Le Wy SNe oh Mh mae 2 ORT RS PURE a tae Poa OMe eS ae PE SEK enw e one ren nL hha Mea e te a, heehee ae lee > | eg oe a ee eres. hee E et Sere ete age Pm T a Pee ee 
a EROM pi POER EAEE EEN ý 
FSP Set PRS ORIA g ee EER Perea EANES ese oe eee isa ee x 
% S s $ 3 
a Ee th 
1878. | Microscopy. 133 
tions have been made during the year of special boxes of such 
excellence as to require particular mention. One of these is a 
_set of exquisite vegetable sections, double-stained in compound 
dye by Dr. Beatty’s method, prepared and contributed by W. G. 
Corthel of Boston. Another, a series of unsurpassed crystalliza- 
tions for the polariscope, by G. E. Bailey, of Lincoln, Neb. And 
a third, the beautiful preparations of Bermuda shells, by C. C. Mer- 
riam, of Rochester, already described in the NATURALIST. 
During the year the club has lost two well-known members by 
death, Edwin Bicknell, of Cambridge, one of the most skillful of 
workers both with the instrument and at the preparing table, and 
Dr. Geo. D. Beatty, of Baltimore, one of the most talented, culti- 
vated and promising of the cultivators of microscopy in this 
country. 
The offices of secretary and treasurer have heretofore been 
combined, and ably filled by the Rev. A. B. Hervey, of Troy, to 
whose thorough:and genial management the club is indebted for 
much of its success. The duties of the position having outgrown 
the time at his command and compelled him to offer his resigna- 
tion, the managers have determined to recommend, instead of 
accepting the resignation, to divide the office and the labor by 
electing a separate treasurer who shall also act as assistant secre- 
This change will doubtless be adopted by the club, and 
add to the ease and efficiency of its management. 
. A New Martine Box For SLIDES.—A new style of mailing box 
contrived by Dr. R. H. Ward, has been adopted by the Postal 
lub, and has proved successful beyond anything tried before. 
An account of it is therefore published in the hope that it may be 
made more generally useful. 
In the boxes hitherto used for posting slides, the slides are 
occasionally found shattered to pieces, while the box containing 
em is quite uninjured or only a little strained. Insome boxes con- 
taining six or twelve slides, half or more of the slides have been 
found broken in a perfectly sound box. This seemed to indicate not 
-the effect of a crushing blow but the result of the inertia of the 
slide itself, which was only supported by the wooden racks at the 
_ ends and more or less perfectly by the cotton stuffed around it. 
An adequate occasion for such an accident might be furnished by | 
throwing the mail-bag from a wagon to the pavement, or trans- 
ferring it to or from a rapidly-moving train. It was therefore 
decided to reject the wooden rack altogether, and instead to sup- 
port the slide by the whole of its edges and much of its sides by 
` cloth, leather, india-rubber, or other soft and evenly-yielding 
Material. This may be attained with the common boxes by 
removing the racks, lining the top, bottom and ends with thick, 
— soft cloth, and arranging folds of the cloth, glued or stitched in 
Place, like a rack at each end of the box so that a double thick- 
