impresses the flower and its peculiarities vividly upon the
memory. If you handle and linger over your flowers, they will seem to
you like pets whose sweet faces you cannot forget.

You want your herbarium, then, for reference, just as you need an
encyclopaedia in your library. You want it when the snow is on the ground
and there is no "living nature" in the flower realm to study.

Every page of the herbarium should look neat and pretty. In order to
secure this result you must first know how to press your flowers. A
flower once wilted can never be made to look nice on paper. It is
therefore necessary to keep fresh the specimen you wish to preserve. You
might carry a large book, and shut your flowers in it as soon as
plucked. But that would be inconvenient. A better way is to buy a botany
box and carry it with you in all your walks. You never know when you may
find some new thing. The box is of tin, opening on one side, and it may
hang by straps from your shoulder. If you lay a little wet moss inside,
and close the door every time you lay in a flower, your plants will keep
fresh in their cool dark nest for three or four days.

To press them tear up newspapers into uniform sizes. Newspapers are
porous, and absorb the moisture from plant stems and leaves better than
brown wrapping-paper. Insert several leaves of the newspaper between the
single flowers. When all are ready, place the whole pile between two
boards, the same size as the papers (any carpenter will cut them for
you), and lay the whole under a heavy weight, like a trunk or pile of
large books. Once a day look over your plants, and put those not quite
pressed into clean dry papers. The papers already used, unless badly
stained, can be spread out, dried, and used again. The problem is how to
dry the plant quickly and thoroughly. The quicker it is dried the better
it retains its colors. The petals will fade, but careful pressing will
make them look very well, not at all like hay. If the plant be taken out
of its press too soon its leaves will wrinkle. Some delicate plants will
dry in twenty-four hours' time, others take three or four days, or even
a week.

Have ready sheets of nice white paper. These you can get a printer to
cut for you of uniform size. The regulation size is 17 by 11 inches. If
the specimen be too long for the paper, bend the stem once or twice. A
botanical specimen should include the whole stalk down to the root,
unless, like some of the tall