When freed from excess of water it is laid on a sheet of thick white blotting-paper, and a piece of smooth washed calico is placed upon it (unwashed calico, on account of its "facing," adheres to the sea-weed).
Scale-mosses are mounted in the same way, or may be floated out in water like sea-weeds, and dried in white blotting paper under strong pressure before gumming on paper, but are best mounted as microscopic slides, care being taken to show the stipules.
The liquid when soaked into a porous combustible substance like blotting-paper burns rapidly and quietly, and when struck with a hammer on a hard surface violently detonates; when a little of the liquid is spread on an anvil and struck, the portion immediately under the hammer only will, as a rule, detonate, the remainder being scattered.
Saltpetre may be made to act as a nitrite by dissolving it in water in the strength of about fifty grains to the ounce, soaking blotting-paper in the solution and letting the paper dry.
Think of it as the blotting paper for the new age.
