Specimens and Specimen Making

Abstract

Comparing old herbarium material with that of recent distribution, one is struck with the fact that the art of specimen making has of late years, and particularly in this country, reached a degree of perfection never aimed at by the collectors of former days. The present herbarium sheet permits a fullness of representation that was not practicable on the foolscap pages of Linnaeus; and accordingly we must now give the whole plant if possible, or as much of it as can conveniently be doubled up within the space of 16i by 11J inches. The ideal specimen presents all possible material requisite for its critical determination or complete description. Better therefore for science is a sheet covered with a crowded, bulky plant, than one decorated with scraps of leaves, flowers and fruits. But in such cases, and in many others too, the flowers detached from their peduncles should be dried separately, and should have the benefit of the collector's utmost skill pro parationis conservatricis opere. Envelopes of very bibulous paper, cotton pads, heated driers, and pressure graduated according to wilting, will serve as an embalming process, preserving every structure and organ, from petal to embryo, uninjured, and ready to live again at the demand of the student and the touch of hot water. Such objects ought not, like the rest of the plant, to be glued down to the sheet; they should be kept in pockets attached to it. At some future day more skill may be exacted of the specimenmaker. The countryman and the cabinet-maker recognize trees by their bark and grain of wood. When the botanist shall have invented terms to describe them, a complete specimen of an arboreous plant will include bark and woodsections. Methods that hurry the drying out of plants in press are valuable to the traveling collector. With that view let him use latticework frames to separate every four to six inches of the pile. They will permit the passage of evaporating air and heat, and will serve also to bring the sides and corners of the pile under better pressure. The pile of plants thus separated, and bound as tightly by three straps as may be thought best, should be kept in about the hottest place on the premises. A metal roof in the sunshine by day, a warm corner in the kitchen by night, will draw off rapidly vast quantities of moisture, and will give fresh, bright specimens. For this process driers not less than 18 by 12 inches are needed. Althouogh the numbering of distributions is now very general, still, it is not