_Eosin stain_ is the most useful for sieve-tubes and plates. Make a strong solution of eosin in equal parts of water and alcohol, and stain the section for five or ten minutes. Wash well in methylated spirit, dehydrate, clean in oil of cloves, and mount in Canada balsam. _Bleaching Process._--The bleaching and clearing of vegetable structures before staining is a very necessary process, especially so if starch be present in any quantity. Clearing agents are of two kinds--those which act by virtue of their property of strongly refracting light, and those which disintegrate and dissolve the amyloid cell contents. To the first class belong the essential oils, as oil of cloves, Canada balsam, glycerine, and other similar bodies; to the second class, solutions of potash, phenol, and chloral hydrate. The actual value of some of these agents is questionable. The process usually preferred is as follows: Place the sections in a fresh clear solution of chlorinated lime, allowing them to remain until quite bleached, say from two to four or five minutes; then gently warm in a test-tube for a few seconds, and quickly replace the solution with distilled water and boil for two or three minutes; repeat the treatment with boiling water three times; wash with a one per cent. solution of acetic acid, and finally with distilled water. The sections are then quite ready for staining operations. When the stem is hard and brown, a solution of chloride of lime should be used--a quarter of an ounce of chloride dissolved in a pint of water, well shaken and stood by to settle down, then pour off the clear fluid for use. For hard tissues this solution answers well, but it is not suitable for leaves, as they require not only bleaching, but the cell contents should be dissolved out to render them transparent. A solution of chlorinated soda answers well for both stems and leaves. It is prepared as follows:-- To one pint of water add two ounces of fresh chloride of lime, shake or stir it well two or three times, then allow it to stand till the lime has settled. Prepare meanwhile a saturated solution of carbonate of soda--common washing soda. Now pour off the clear supernatant fluid from the chloride of lime, and add to it, by degrees, the soda solution, when a precipitate of carbonate of lime will be thrown down; continue to add the soda solution till no further precipitate is formed. Filter the solution, and keep it in a well-stoppered bottle in the dark, otherwise it speedily spoils. Sections bleached in chlorinated soda must, when white enough, be washed in distilled water, and allowed to remain in it for twenty-four hours, changing the water four or five times, and adding a few drops of nitric acid, or at the rate of eight or ten drops to the half-pint, to the water employed before the final washing takes place. From water transfer them to alcohol, in which they must remain for an hour or more.