Excerpt from The Oceanic Tintinnoina of the Plankton Gathered During the Last Cruise of the Carnegie

The samples were examined in the original sea water and formalin without other treatment than the occasional replacement of loss by evaporation with distilled water. It is thus possible carefully to orient the organism under the cover slip and to secure diverse views of the same individual. There does not seem to be any satisfactory method of sealing off mounts in formalin. A few smears of plankton were made, however, and mounted either in Venice turpentine or in balsam. These were used to supplement the routine examinations. Adequate micro scopes and maximum equipment were used at all times in the examination of the material.

After a sufficient knowledge of the species of Tintin noina had been Obtained, each sample was systematically searched by the use of the mechanical stage until all the species had been detected. Each sample, after being thoroughly shaken, was examined on a standard slide under a long cover slip, and several slides were made of it. When the whole sample had been investigated, the material was washed back into the original phial. Care was taken that slides, slips, pipettes, and other instru ments were cleaned before another sample was opened. The camera lucida was always attached to the microscope so that drawings could be made at once when a desired individual was discovered. In order to have some sem blance of quantitative record of frequency in individuals of the component species of each net sample, records were made during the search of the sample up to the first hundred individuals examined. Thereafter each additional species was recorded as merely present. The number of individuals recorded is thus the percentage in that sample. These records refer solely to the relative numbers of different species in the one sample, and do not indicate the relative numbers of the same species in other samples. In the examination of the pump samples, the whole number of individuals of all species found was counted out directly, so that in some instances several hundred were recorded. These are reported fully. In most cases the numbers were small and are recorded with those of the net samples without differentiation.

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