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should be thoroughly dried by the sun or before a fire. As soon as dry 
it is fit for use again, and, if treated carefully, the same paper may be 
used over and over again so long as it remains untorn. 
Changing the paper between plants is a very simple matter, as the 
specimens after having been dried a little can be lifted with great ease. 
In the case of thin-leaved and delicate plants it is sometimes necessary 
to treat the sheets of paper on which they are laid as part of the speci¬ 
men, removing these when the papers are changed with the specimens 
undisturbed upon them to the dry sheets. The uppermost sheets of 
the bundle where this has been done should be marked, and when next 
the papers in it are changed, the opposite side should be the one 
from which the papers are first removed. This ensures a renewal of 
both papers for every specimen with each alternate change. 
This is advice that the collector is urged to begin by following 
implicitly. Probably he will in a short time ignore it altogether ; to 
begin with its neglect will only lead to disappointment, and any 
modification of it must depend entirely on his own appreciation of the 
atmospheric conditions of his station, and on his facilities for drying 
his specimens artificially and so of becoming independent of these 
conditions. In the cold weather in most parts of India the paper does 
not need to be often changed, while in the hot weather experience will 
very soon indicate a considerable class of plants that, if placed in 
thoroughly dry paper and exposed in very thin bundles to the sun, do 
not require to be looked at or changed at all until placed in the news¬ 
paper, At that season of the year a long plank, a flat rock, a sheet of 
corrugated iron, on which to place the bundles in a single layer in the 
full sunshine (care being taken to turn the bundles over three or four 
times a day) afford almost ideal drying facilities. Succulent plants and 
plants with large or with soft fruits should be in bundles by themselves; 
these bundles should be seen to every night and dry paper provided for 
them. Plants of this class, no matter how great one’s drying facilities 
may be, cannot receive fresh paper too often ; mould is certain to attack 
them; it does so, indeed, more readily when they are being rapidly than 
when they are being slowly dried, if the paper containing them be not 
constantly changed. But during the rains, or when the atmosphere is 
charged with moisture (and this is only too often the case in Burma 
and Assam), it is a much more difficult matter to dry specimens. Still 
it can be done. If one is stationed near an ice-machine or a saw-mill 
or any industry that requires a steam-engine, the drying of specimens 
is reduced to a matter of diplomacy. Somewhere near the boiler of a 
river steamer too there is an atmosphere of excellent quality from the 
botanist’s point of view. Still better when one has for a neighbour a 
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