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the good fortune to possess or have access to a herbarium to reject 
or throw away a specimen. Never move on a botanical journey with¬ 
out having each bundle of paper in its own tarpaulin cover. Always 
see to it oneself at the commencement of the morning march that 
each tarpaulin thoroughly covers the bundle to which it belongs. When¬ 
ever one can make or take an opportunity of getting the bundles 
near a fire, do so. On returning to head-quarters, do not lose a 
moment before getting the specimens into fresh paper and bestow¬ 
ing them in the drying chamber. 
There is another method of preservingspecimens collected during 
the rains which might be of use where one is taking a very long jour¬ 
ney, during the whole extent ofwhich it will be impossible for him to 
halt for a day or two, so as to take or make an opportunity for redry¬ 
ing a damp paper. This is the method employed by the well-known 
African traveller Dr. Schweinfurth. The specimens at the end of a 
day’s journey are laid in thick blotting paper, as they are in the ordi¬ 
nary method, only now no more than a single half sheet of paper need 
be placed between each layer of specimens. When a bundle has been 
formed, it is held up, so that one corner is higher than the rest. 
Spirit is poured gently on the paper at this corner, and is continued 
to be poured until the paper composing the bundle has absorbed so 
much that it begins to drip from the opposite lowest corner. Then the 
bundle is laid flat in the bottom of a tin-box of suitable length and 
breadth. Other similar bundles are formed and placed above the first. 
When the box is full, the lid is once for all soldered down, and the 
specimens keep perfectly till the end of the journey. With this as with 
the ordinary bottling spirit process the chief difficulty is that a spirit 
sufficiently strong to ensure that the specimens shall keep renders 
them exceedingly brittle, while a spirit so weak that the flowers are 
not spoiled by it for future herbarium work does not protect them 
permanently from decay. Excellent as this system is, it is better, there¬ 
fore, to use it cautiously and in all cases to consider it but a tem¬ 
porary measure. Use, therefore, a weak spirit, and, when the journey 
is over, prepare the specimens by drying in the ordinary way. 
Specimens that have been sufficiently dried should be laid be¬ 
tween single sheets of newspaper. When unusually woody, like pines 
and oaks, or when there are large fruits attached, the specimens should 
have rolls of paper interspersed in the manner already described as ne¬ 
cessary when drying them, and at the same time care should be used to 
distribute the specimens pretty equally over the sheets. It is needless 
to add that all plants when dried ought to be transmitted to the Bota¬ 
nical Garden, Calcutta, with the least possible delay. In the cold and 
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