LARGE-SCALE CULTURING of throat swabbings for group A streptococci is currently advocated as essential to primary prevention of the rheumatic sequelae of streptococcal infections (1). This proposal is based upon a conclusion that streptococcal infections cannot be diagnosed accurately without supporting laboratory evidence (2). Physicians can obtain this evidence in many States and in some municipalities simply by mailing or delivering specimens of throat swabbings to a public health laboratory (3, 4). Since delays varying from 24 to 72 hours may occur between collection and culture of the specimens, a transport out-fit or kit which assures viability of the streptococci after transit is mandatory. Outfits which keep the specimen moist in either a nutritional or nonnutritional base until cultivation on blood agar have been proposed (5-9). This principle was applied in the nutritive-free, 1 percent agar gel transport medium which the laboratory of the Connecticut State Department of Hea.lth used for many years in its collection outfit for throat swabbings. The swab specimen was inserted into the agar gel in a cotton-stoppered tube for transmission to the laboratory. The mailing outfit included a metal screw-capped inner cylinder and a fiberboard screw-capped outer container. The screwcapped containers and test tubes were expensive but were reusable. The costs for washing, sterilizing, making the agar gel, and reassembling the outfits were absorbed with other overhead expenses; these labor costs were not at the time prohibitive because the volume of specimens did not exceed 5,000 annually. Heightened interest in group A streptococci has led, however, to an unprecedented increase in requests for examinations of throat swabbings. Hence, cost and convenience have become very important and have compelled the development of a mailing outfit that will be at once less expensive, more convenient for large-volume processing, commercially available, disposa.ble, and effective in preserving streptococcal viability. The Hollinger filter strip method (10-12) appeared to fulfill these requirements, but it has several disadvantages. After collection, proper usa.ge requires physicians to air-dry the strip before sealing and mailing, and busy physicians may not at all times perform this ta.sk judiciously. Compliance with the recommendation to remove the strip 4 to 6 hours after its application to the blood plate necessitates staffing a laboratory beyond normal closing hours for specimens received in the late afternoon. Moreover, there is no swab to incubate in broth for later use in preparing smears for fluorescent antibody staining, a step our laboratory has found convenient and successful (4). A dry-swab outfit for mailing (13, 14) apMr. Redys is a supervising microbiologist, Mrs. Hibbard is an assistant director, and Mr. Borman is the director of the laboratory division, Connecticut State Department of Health, Hartford. The study described was supported in part by the Heart Disease Control Program of the National Center for Chronic Disease Control, Public Health Service.