AND LAYING OUT SEA-WEEDS, ETC. 
XXVll 
With fresh- gathered plants there is no difficulty, of course, but sections of dried specimens 
are occasionally troublesome, by refusing to resume their natural shape. A drop of muriatic 
acid will sometimes induce them to open, but not always. Nevertheless, it is so rarely pos- 
sible to mend the matter by moistening the dried specimen before it is cut, and clean, good 
sections are so much more easily made of dried plants than of re-moistened ones, that the rule 
is, to cut them in their dried state, as a first effort, and resort to other expedients, if necessary, 
afterwards. 
But to proceed. The sections being more or less expanded, take one of the thin cell-covers 
(ascertaining that it is clean and bright), and let it gently down upon the slide over the little 
pool and its contents, and you have at once a microscopic slide ready for examination under 
your compound microscope. 
Troublesome as this operation may seem to be, when read of, it is a very amusing one in 
practice, and by no means hard of accomplishment. Longitudinal sections are made in the 
same way ; but it is always well then to secure a fork in the branching, as the one stem can be 
held dowm quite firmly while the other is being cut ; whereas one only, if very slender, cannot 
be thoroughly secured during the process of cutting. 
Were the mechanical part now described the worst difficulty in the examination of sea-weed 
structure, all the world might be made learned by algological durcJischnitts ; but the delicacy 
of eye and judgment requisite for understanding the meaning of what is seen, is a part of the 
matter not so easily taught or acquired. Courage, however ! A comparison of fresh-gathered 
and dried durcJischnitts of the same genera ; a habit, if possible, of making drawings of every- 
thing one sees; and a patient acquiescence with the necessity of being twenty times mistaken 
at first for every once one is right, will go a long way towards making a scholar in its 
secondary sense, out of a mere scholar or amateur. 
