Now the chief thing in a collection is to have it good of its kind. The specimens should be as perfect as possible, and be kept neat and clean. Especially they should be set in good order. They should all have labels, with their names on them. A collection well marked will be worth much more than one without the names placed on the specimens. A collection all jumbled together, without order, will be of little use. If you set a bird’s nest here, a wasp’s nest there, a bright stone next, and then a beetle, or a card of butterflies, your cabinet will have small teaching value. Remember a cabinet is not merely made to “look pretty” like a doll’s house, or a shop window. Place things of a kind together. Then put kinds which are nearest like next each other. Put your insects together, and arrange them by their orders. Put the beetles together, the butterflies together, the wasps, and bees, and so on. Spiders come in as one order of the insects. Your crabs and shrimps must stand together, but be placed next the insects, as they are of the jointed class of creatures. Put your birds’ nests, and eggs, and any stuffed birds, or pictures of birds that you may have, together. And so on, with all the other things. Your cabinet may be a small one, but if it is neatly arranged, and all the specimens are good of their kind, rightly named, and kept clean, it will be of real value. Do not be in such a hurry to collect, that you put in rubbish, instead of good specimens. A butterfly with broken wings, a beetle without a head, and a spider that has lost half its legs, are not worth a place in a cabinet. To get together even a small cabinet of objects in natural history, takes time, care, and patience. I knew a girl who was carefully collecting and mounting beetles. In a whole summer she got only twenty-five. But each one was perfect, different from the rest, nicely fastened in place, and had its name written beside it. So her collection was of real value. After you have secured a nice little cabinet, the trouble will be to keep it safe, and in order. Specimens must be taken care of. All specimens of plants, and insects, are very liable to be destroyed by little bugs. Only the things kept in alcohol are really safe from being eaten. Camphor and red pepper are of some use to keep out these enemies. Your teachers will know, or can easily learn, how to prepare the specimens with poisons, which will kill the mites and not harm you or the specimens. You must leave it to them. It is nice to have a case with glass doors. If you cannot have that, arrange as many of the objects as you can in boxes with panes of glass laid over them. For open cabinets it is well to have a piece of fine gauze to lay over each shelf, or over the whole set of shelves, when the cabinet is not in immediate use. Dust makes a cabinet look very ugly. But you cannot clean off beetles and butterflies with a dusting cloth or brush. It would ruin such delicate things.