File:Harvard collection.jpg

Harvard Collection

These considerations have led us to adopt a metal cabinet, which has been specially devised for our needs. It is made of sheet tin in such a manner that the trays are very compact, are absolutely interchangeable, an intake up a minimum amount of room. The construction adopted is such that the tendency to warp is entirely done away with (Fig.3) The trays are all japanned so that they do not rust, and we slip a bit of white paper into each tray to make a background for the sections. Each tray is, moreover, furnished with a litle label holder, and they are put together in cabinets of thirty trays each, the trays themselves being of such a size that they will hold twenty-four of the ordinary slides, three inches by one. Moreover, the cabinets themselves are so devised that they can be stacked one on top of another, taking up a minimum amount of room. We devote a vertical column of these cabinets to a species, and simply interpolate from time to time a new cabinet in the column as the growth of the col- lection may render necessary. The cabinets are made by Peter Gray & Co., of Union street, Boston, and are now kept in stock by several of the dealers in microscopical supplies in this country. They cost only a trifle more than the wooden cabinets, and are, according to our trial of them, certainly to be preferred to any other form of cabinet which we have tested.

Text from The Harvard Embryological Collection.