THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
127 
oan afford to haye one made; for, after hav- 
ing carved your work, you can joiner it, 
and you can plane and prepare your own 
wood, and be thuis independent of the car- 
penter, which is most desirable. Our bench 
is of the following dimensions: Length, 4 
feet 5 inches; breadth, 3 feet 1 inch; 
height, 3 feet li inch. The wood is oak, 
three inches thick, and there are three rows 
of holes for the hold-fast. There are only 
two holes in each row; the centre of the 
holes of first row, three inches and a half 
from the edge, and fourteen inches from 
head of bench. There is the usual bench- 
stop, or dog, and the bench-vice is of the 
ordinary pattern, which may be procured 
at any hardware store, and is easily fitted 
up. 
To he continued. 
How to Make an Herbarium. 
BY JOHN W. BUCK, B. SC. 
Concluded from page 117. 
TO mount the specimens, lay them on a 
sheet of brown paper or newspaper, gum 
-them carefully all over the back, and then 
lay them gently on the white sheet in the 
best position, which you should have pre- 
viously decided on, and press them down 
with a clean handkerchief. Use no more 
gum than is absolutely necessary, and wipe 
away any excess at once. A good plan with 
a very large or weak plant is to gum the 
back of the stem, fix it by a gentle pressure, 
and then turn up the leaves and flowers one 
I by one, gum them, and then lay them back 
again in position. Another method, which 
I remember trying once with a long trail- 
ing pimpernel, and which succeeded well, 
was to gum it on the back as before; shift 
{it, still face downwards, to a sheet of brown 
\ paper the same size as that on which I was 
I going to mount it, arrange it as I desired, 
land lastly turn the white sheet down over 
:it. On lifting it up, it of course brought 
the specimen away with it. The delicate 
blossoms which have been separately dried 
should next foe placed in their natural posi- 
tion, care being taken to hide any awkward 
appearance of a join in the stem. Long 
plants, too long to lie on one sheet, should 
be cut in two pieces, and these laid side by 
side; and if the stem be very long and a 
piece of it be permanently removed, the 
cut ends should not be brought close to- 
gether, but it should plainly appear that a 
piece of the stem is absent. All parts of 
the plant should be shown as far as they 
can, and on the same sheet. For instance, 
somewhere on the dandelion sheet should 
be shown the globular downy seed-head, 
and with the strawberry plant the straw- 
berry fruit itself, which latter, notwith- 
standing its succulent nature, may be easily 
dried, if not too ripe to begin with. These 
should not be made to appear as if growing 
from the same plant as in flower unless they 
were actually found so growing. In fact, 
in mounting such parts, nature must be 
imitated, not contradicted. A few slips of 
well-gummed paper of the same kind as 
that you are mounting upon, should be 
kept at hand, with which to fix down stiff 
stems, which often have a tendency to part 
company with their sheets. 
Labeling should be done immediately 
after mounting. To keep the names, local- 
ities and dates of the plants while pressing, 
the particulars may be written on small 
scraps of paper, which must be transferred 
each time with the respective specimens 
whenever the sheets are changed. I have 
found this plan answer best in practice, as, 
if the entries are made in a note-book, 
there is a danger of afterwards mistaking 
one plant for another. But however these 
facts are preserved, as soon as a specimen is 
fairly mounted, they should be transferred 
to the right-hand bottom corner of the per- 
manent sheet. They may be written thus: 
Ehinanthus Crista-galli, 
(Yellow-rattle), 
Hayfields, near Freshford, 
10. 6. 78. 
(Collector's name.) 
Or printed labels may be obtained with 
spaces to be filled up. After mounting and 
labeling, the sheets should be again pressed 
flat for a day or two, 
