Bulletin - United States National Museum - Smithsonian Institution

234 FLORA OF WASHINGTON AND VICINITY.
size by baviug the whole package, boards, papers, and all, considerably-
narrower. Few single specimens are more than 9 or 9^ inches wide, but
most packages are made 11 or 12 inches wide; this saving of two or
three inches in width is very considerable, and works in all cases quite
as well.
The next plant on the list of desiderata is then found, taken out, and
labeled in the same manner, and so on until the list is exhausted. If
at any time you take out the last duplicate you have, do not fail to
strike it oft' your list of duplicates, and if you have two such list s strike
it from both. The law forbids the sending of labels of which any part
is written, as third-class-matter, and it is necessary to give each label a
temporary number and put with the specimen a corresponding printed
figure (cut out of a calendar), and to send the labels in a letter. Eather
than do this I generally patronize the express comjjanies wherever my
correspondents are near one of their stations. A very sensible decision
was made by Postmaster- General Key that scientific labels, bills of lad-
ing, etc., if they contained nothing irrelevant, might pass with the speci-
mens. This ruling has since been reversed as not in harmony with the
spirit of the law.* There are cases where large packages have to go
short distances, when it is more economical to send them by express.
A package to be sent by mail or by express should be securelj^ done
up. The plants are first placed between two paste-boards of uniform size
and tied up with a string around the middle and each end ; then a piece
of heavy wrapping-paper, large enough to envelop it entirely, is put
around the i^ackage in a systematic manner, drawn firmly up laterally,
the ends neatly turned back, and the whole securely bound with strong
twine. The twine should be in one piece and go first round the middle,
then round each end, then round the middle endwise, and perhaps also
three times round in this manner, once near each edge of the package.
Each time that the cord crosses another it should have a turn round it,
and each time it completes a circuit be secured in the approved manner.
These directions are imj^ortant in view of the fact that the least move-
ment of the specimens in the package works their immediate ruin.
* As much doubt and uncertainty still exists ou this point, I will yay for the benefit
of all concerned, that I called personally at the Post-Offico Department (December 6,
1831), and Avas 'officially assured of the correctness of the statements herein made. It
is, however, a great inconvenience to all branches of science, and operates against the
Department and in the interest of the express companies. An earnest representation
of the subject on the part of the large scientific bodies of the country would doubt-
less secure the amendment by Congress of the act in question, and this should be done.