The Society is involved in a lot of laboratory work at its meetings. The problem is that many microscopical techniques require more than a Saturday afternoon to complete. This page will collect a few procedures which can be done at meetings.

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Euparal

Euparal is a useful mountant for the quick production of permanent slides. Specimens may be mounted in this medium directly from alcohol, thereby eliminating a number of the stages involved in the traditional Canada Balsam process. Dyes need to be alcoholic for use in this technique. Approximately 1% concentration is probably strong enough for first experiments.    

Use 95% 2-ethoxyethanol in distilled water to dissolve the following dyes for botannical subjects:

Safranin     A useful dye for botannical specimens

Fast Green FCF  A non-fading dye useful as a counterstain against safranin.

Cotton Blue   Where fast green may be too powerful in its action, cotton blue may be worth experimenting with. It barely dissolves in absolute alcohol, but sufficient will dissolve in 90 or 95% 2-ethoxyethanol. This low solubility further moderates its staining action. This is a useful aqueous dye for micro-fungi.

When using Euparal, a final rinse in Euparal Essence before mounting is advantageous.

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More quick-mounting techniques

Blood smears (to be completed)