18 SEA MOSSES. 



different species, or the plants from different locali- 

 ties, separate. Then, as your plants are collected, 

 they may be roughly sorted, and put in different 

 bottles. But two or three bottles . should be reserved 

 for the most delicate and fragile forms. And as there 

 are several of them, which rapidly perish on being 

 exposed to the air, the bottles should be kept partly 

 full of sea water. The more delicate Polysiphonias, 

 the Calithamnions, Dasyas, and some others will need 

 this protection. I have found a quart fruit jar very 

 handy. I get the kind that I can fasten a string 

 around the neck, so as to carry it suspended in 

 one hand, which leaves the other always free to 

 gather in the plants with. A jar, whose cover goes on 

 and off, with the least possible trouble, is the one to 

 be selected. The only disadvantage in using a 

 receptacle of this sort, for your collection, is that 

 in climbing over the wet and mossy rocks, your feet 

 may chance to slip and you get a tumble, then in 

 your efforts to save yourself, you will forget all about 

 your fragile glass jar, and will smash it into a thou- 

 sand pieces, upon the hard stones, and perhaps lose 

 your whole collection. But two or three of these jars, 

 carefully packed in a basket, so as not to be easily 

 broken, would perhaps furnish as handy a collecting 

 apparatus as you could extemporize at the sea shore. 



