XXll 
RULES FOR PRESERVING 
This is rough work, though, and seldom necessary. In any house you may, by asking, have 
the use of a common table, or cover a better one with oil-cloth, and so also the floor. You 
must then have ready a largish bowl and three moderate-sized meat-dishes — if white, so much 
the better. Also some fine white “medium” cartridge or drawing-paper, previously cut into 
three sizes, so that there may be uniformity in the appearance of your collection. Also an 
ample supply of blotting-paper (the cheap sort is sufficiently good), and of well-washed muslin 
(the commonest kind of book-muslin) cut into slips of folio-paper size. You require also a 
camel’s-hair brush for cleaning the plants, and a porcupine’s quill or ivory knitting-needle, 
or something pointed, for separating fine branches and spreading them delicately on the paper. 
A pair of scissors, too, for clipping overthick specimens ; a pair of pincers for lifting them 
about ; and, finally, plenty of both sea and fresh water. Of course, too, there should be a 
puncheon at hand, to receive the water in which you have been laying out your plants, the 
moment you observe it becoming dirtied or discoloured ; for, without the strictest attention 
to its cleanliness and purity, the paper on which your specimen is spread will be stained, 
and remain an eyesore for ever. 
And now, with all these appliances around you, begin your work by washing your plants. 
For which purpose put a dozen or so into the howl — those first which you may have brought 
home in bottles — and pour sea-water on them. Do not overcrowd the bowl, or you cannot see 
' what you are about. With a moderate number you can take them up one by one and shake 
them a little in succession. Then place one in a dish with sea- water, and, drawing it to you, 
observe its condition as to dirt and mussels, which often infest sea-weeds. Brush it over care- 
fully with your camel’s-hair brush to remove the dirt, and if the mussels will not move, ^ress 
them off with the end of the porcupine’s quill. When you are satisfied that the specimen is 
clean, remove it into dish No. 2, still floating it in sea-water, and there let it remain till you 
have prepared several others in a similar manner ; for it does not do to go backwards and for- 
wards from one part of the process to another. 
When you have got from half-a-dozen to a dozen plants (dependent on their size, for they 
must never be crowded) in dish No. 2, push the first dish away and bring the second close. 
The plants are all clean, it is true, but you have now to consider, as you see them floating in 
the water, whether they will look well when flattened by pressure, or whether any bushy ones 
among them may not be improved by a little thinning. If there are branches springing from 
all sides of the stem {guadrifariously)^ as in the cases of Callithamnion arhuscula (Fig. 262), 
and Chrysymenia (now Chylocladia) clavellosa (Fig. 136), your laid-out frond will form heavy 
lumps here and there, and its beauty will be lost. Unpleasant, therefore, as it is to clip any 
luxuriant growth, it is desirable to make the sacrifice, and to cut away some portion of the 
branches, that the rest of them may be seen to advantage. 
But there is still a difficulty before you. There are some plants which will not bear even 
the touch of fresh water, and which, therefore, must be laid out, as well as cleaned and 
prepared, in that from the sea. 
Polysiphonia Brodicei (Fig. 120), for instance, begins to decompose at once in fresh w^ater, 
and were you to attempt to lay it out therein, you would see all the fine tips of the branches 
breaking off under your brush, till it became comparatively quite stunted. So also P.Jihraia 
(Fig. 113), P. violacea (Fig. 119), P. fibrillosa (Fig. 123). But this last is almost worse, 
for it decomposes so rapidly under any circumstances, that only laying it out at once saves it 
