DESClllPTlVE EOTANY. 



171 



268. 



When the plants are dried, they are put, according to the 

 order of the system, or according to the natural method, in 

 whole sheets of writing paper ; on the first side of which the 

 name of the plant, its situation, and the time of its being laid 

 down, are marked. Subspecies, and several large parts of 

 the same plant, are placed in separate sheets. A hundred 

 and fifty, or two hundred of such sheets are bound together 

 between pasteboard covers, on which the genera are marked 

 in the order in which they have been inserted, and an exact 

 register of the whole is kept. 



269. 



The care with which such collections are kept is repaid 

 in no common degree. This care requires, in the first place, 

 that the plants should be most correctly determined, — that 

 the authorities for their names should be given, — and that, in 

 every case, it should be noticed from whom the plants have 

 been obtained, and, where it can be got, that the handwriting 

 of the sender should be subscribed. The collection must 

 also be defended from insects and moisture. The former of 

 these are not easily removed, especially in many families, as 

 in the Cynareae. But an industrious examination of the col- 

 lection, in the course of which the insects are killed, and, at 

 any rate, a solution of corrosive sublimate in spirit of wine, are 

 the best means of protecting it from these causes of destruc- 

 tion. 



