480 Harper—Nuclear Phenomena in the Smuts. 
anther smut is perfectly killed and fixed by using the weaker 
Flemming solution with an exposure of from fifteen minutes to 
an hour. Longer exposures produce no apparent effect. The 
most delicate cells are neither shrunken nor plasmoiyzed by 
this treatment and are hardly visibly different than in the living 
condition. 
A slide is now covered with a film of albumen fixative as is 
customary in attaching serial sections. A drop of the fixed 
material without any washing is drawn up into a capillary tube, 
touched lightly and quickly to the surface of the prepared slide, 
and a minute droplet of the fixing solution with the contained 
cells is thus deposited on the albumen film. The spores settle 
on the 'albumen which is at the same time at least partially co¬ 
agulated by the action of the fixing solution. They are thus 
held fast, and in the same fashion a series of droplets may be 
distributed over an area which can be conveniently enclosed by 
the cover glass. From the appearance of the slide when it is 
successful the process may be compared to stippling and may 
be known by that name. The slide should be left exposed for a 
few moments to remove excess of moisture by evaporation, 
though it should by no means be allowed to become dry. The 
preparation can then be passed rapidly through the graded al¬ 
cohols, whereby the albumen is still more firmly set. 
After this treatment the preparation is ready for any desired 
method of staining on the slide and can be treated in all re¬ 
spects as a slide with attached ribbons of sections. Flemming’s 
triple stain was used in making the preparations of smuts to be 
described below. The point for care in the above process is in 
depositing the droplets on the albumen. If the droplets are too 
large the albumen is washed away and the spores are not at¬ 
tached. The finer the droplets the more evenly the spores can 
be spread on the slide and the more certain it is that each will 
be attached. Still it is inevitable that many are lost, and the 
method is only to be recommended in cases where an abundance 
of material in every desired stage is obtainable. I have used 
it in making preparations of yeast and swarm spores with great 
success. It is also far superior to the ordinary method for at¬ 
taching bacteria to the slide by drying or heat coagulation, es- 
