The process of ringing is best performed upon a turntable, which any dealer in microscope accessories will supply. It consists of a circular brass plate which revolves about its centre and to which the slide to be ringed is affixed. A bottle of ringing asphalt and a fine paint brush are essentials. With a little of the asphalt upon our brush, we revolve the turntable and place the brush against the edge of the cover slip as it revolves, in such a manner that we paint a narrow rim of asphalt over the junction of cover slip and slide. The asphalt prevents moisture from reaching the glycerine jelly. Of course we may ring our slides without making use of a turntable, but it is not easy to paint a neat ring without mechanical assistance. For square cover slips it is obvious that a turntable is useless. Specimens mounted in Canada Balsam do not need ringing, for the Balsam is unaffected by air or the moisture therein, when once it has set hard. Several firms supply prepared microscope slides, and it is often useful to know where reliable preparations may be obtained. The slides supplied by Messrs Flatters & Garnett Ltd., 409 Oxford Road, Manchester, are models of what well-made slides should be. It always lends greater interest to the hobby if objects are found and mounted by the microscopist himself. By going out into the fields, by the pond-side, or along the shore, in search of interesting material for examination, much will be learned of animal and plant habits which even the microscope cannot reveal. Some of us, however, have neither the opportunity to hunt for our specimens, nor the time to mount them properly, and those of us who are so situated will be glad to know where objects may be obtained. Apparatus, useful for students of pond or sea-shore life, may be obtained from Messrs Flatters & Garnett, who always have a goodly stock of collecting jars, nets, &c. From the same firm, also, may be obtained stains and any of the limited number of chemicals required by the microscopist. We have given a few simple directions for staining in our chapter on Bacteria. In many cases it is absolutely necessary to have recourse to stains in order to see the structure of the objects we are desirous of examining; in other cases it is necessary to stain when we wish to know the nature of the various parts of our object. Suppose, for example, we wish to find out whether a plant section contains starch, we then add iodine solution, and if any parts stain deep blue we know at once that starch is present. There are other stains for other plant and animal substances; stains for woody matter, stains for fats, &c., but the art of staining is a science in itself, and would require many chapters to describe fully. Most of the objects described in this book can be studied in the natural state, but, even so, they may be rendered far more beautiful by staining.