Sea weed mounted on paper of standard size
With several shallow dishes of sea-water within easy reach of your hands, and your pails of specimens floating in sea-water, you are ready to begin. Select your first specimen and lift it with care from the water. Dip it up and down gently in clean water. Every bit of matter that does not belong strictly to that plant must come off, and all the sand or other dirt. Let it spread out naturally in the water and with your scissors prune it to suit your purpose. Some grow in such a bunch that they will not show well on the paper, others may have to be trimmed to get them onto the page. Do not, of course, trim them down to look alike but preserve their peculiarities and characteristics. The great charm in a collection of this kind is in its variety. When the plant is absolutely clean, float it in a dish of clean water. This last dish should be a broad one for now you are to slip your sheet of mounting paper right into the water and get the plant onto it, floating it out in a natural attitude. This takes a knack, you may be sure, but the knack can be acquired with practice. If you can provide yourself with a pane of glass to lay the sheet upon when you take it from the water you will have the best conditions. Some people get along very well with a shallow plate. Some of the delicate parts will be certain to cling together as you lift them out of the water, but you can remedy that by dipping a few drops of water onto them and with your needle you can arrange them as you wish. Take your time. This is not a job for a person in a hurried mood. Examine and admire each piece as you work at it. Make it yours for all time, although you may sell it the following day and never see it again. Lay one of your driers on the lower board, put a mounted specimen all wet as it is, on this, then spread over the sheet a piece of muslin, lay on another drier, mount another sea-weed, cover it with cloth and so on you may build up your pile. Top it with a drier, put on the second board, and your weight, of ten pounds or so. Coarse, thick algæ should not be pressed in the same pile with the fine ones as they would make the pressure uneven. Blotters and cloths must be changed every day at first, dried in the sun to be ready for the next day. After two or three days the cloths may be taken off, and the plants left in press at least a week longer, changing driers every day. If you can set aside a regular time each day for this job, it is not so likely to be forgotten. Moulding specimens are very disappointing.
After one has made a little collection of sea-weeds all the stories about the wonders of the deep will take on a reality. You will want to read all you can find about the Sargasso Sea, which sounds like a fairy story. Maybe you have a specimen of this sea-weed in your collection, maybe you have been fortunate enough to sail through that "vast acreage of vegetation as large as the continent of Europe, lying southwest of the Azores!" Do you wonder that the first navigators, sailing uncharted seas, were alarmed by this vast expanse and thought of course there were concealed shallows beneath the feathery fronds of this gulf weed? You must read, too, of some of the giants of the sea-weed tribe; the "devil's apron," the "sea-otter's cabbage," with its air-vessel as big as a hogshead, and its stalk a slender cord hundreds of feet in length. These are all algæ, and so are the microscopic plants which produce that wonderful phosphorescence on the surface of the ocean. There are still unsolved mysteries about these plants and there is always a chance that the boys and girls who collect sea-weeds to-day on the beach may in the years to come read some of the secrets now hidden from all eyes. It is well worth while to keep such a big thought in mind even while doing the simple and easy work of mounting specimens.
COLLECTING SHELLS
Of all the kinds of collections of natural objects that I have seen, there is none that has quite so much beauty, in itself, as a collection of shells. How easily they can be displayed in a cabinet for our friends to enjoy, too, and they are never attacked, so far as I know, by what we call museum pests, those destructive little creatures which make life a burden to the owners of collections of insects, plants, stuffed birds, and the like. Perhaps the products of the sea possess an especial charm to the "landlubber," but most people admire shells and love to handle them and to wonder where they came from and what kind of creatures built them.
Did any one ever visit the shore and come home without a pocket bulging with shells? Or a big handful tied up in a grimy handkerchief? Probably that is the way most of the great collections in the country were begun. You can begin one this summer or any time that you visit a beach, and add to it daily if you are spending the summer on the shore. As your collection and your interest grow, you can exchange specimens common on your coast with collectors who live on the other oceans and the Gulf. Remember that every shell is rare until you get it in your cabinet and what is common as the sand on your coast may be a rarity in other parts of the world.
You will probably begin your collection by picking up empty shells of various sizes, colours and shapes. Sometimes you will find a pair still held together by the tough tendon that worked the hinge when the bivalve that built the shell was alive and going about his affairs. Many of these will be worn by their daily encounter with the tide, and some will be pierced with small round holes too neatly ground to have been made by accident. These holes give you a hint as to why this shell is empty for they are the work of a band of little pirates which live by boring into their neighbours and sucking their life-blood. Many of the dead shells are those of animals which live far out at sea or in the deep water and have been washed ashore when the tide was high. Search along the shore where the water has drifted a line of sea-wrack. It looks like rubbish at first glance but it is almost sure to hold many small shells you will want, some even from far-off coasts.
The collector will not long be satisfied to gather only such shells as he finds on the beach. His eyes are opened. What seemed to him at first a flat, smooth surface of sand strewn with bits of rubbish and a few shells, most of them not worth picking up, has awakened into life. Every pool has become as a village, its inhabitants engaged in a variety of occupations. The smooth sand is inhabited. The centre of population is down at the low-water line. The rocks, the bridge piers, the wharf piles, and the sea-walls are seen to be covered with living things. Now collecting begins in good earnest.
On the sandy beach one needs a net, a sieve, and a shovel. The best costume for such work is the same as that worn when bathing. You will need to be in the water part of the time and will not wish to be hampered by anxiety as to clothing. The best time to go is the time you can go, of course, but you are more likely to find a great variety of things at the very lowest tide. You have heard of planting "by the moon" and you are right in supposing that the moon has little influence on potatoes and cabbages. But to go collecting on the sea-shore "by the moon" is quite reasonable. When the moon is full and when it is new they have what are called spring tides at which times the ebb is lower than ordinarily. After a storm is a fine time to look for things which have been dragged by the force of the water from their anchorage in the depths, and tossed ashore.