Rev. P. Keith on the Structure of Living Fabrics. 15 



tilla reptans, or Common Creeping Cinquefoil. Secondly, the 

 climbing stem, which being also too feeble to support itself in 

 an upright position, attaches itself, by means of lateral roots, 

 or of other appropriate organs, to other plants, or to other 

 bodies for support, and thus attains to the elevation proper 

 to the species. It is exemplified in the case of the Vine and 

 Ivy. Thirdly, the twining stem, the most elegant and most 

 singular of them all, which being also too feeble to support 

 itself in an upright position, ascends, not merely by clinging 

 to a prop, but by winding spirally around the first plant or 

 prop that it meets with ; the winding never being effected at 

 random, but always in a specific and determinate manner, 

 which is also always the same in the same species of plant. 

 Thus in the Hop plant (Hamulus lupulus) the winding proceeds 

 in a direction from left to right, or according to the apparent 

 motion of the sun, and never otherwise ; while in Con volvulus se- 

 ptum, or Great Bindweed, it proceeds in a direction from right 

 to left, or contrary to the apparent motion of the sun, and 

 never otherwise. If you attempt to compel the stem to re- 

 verse its mode of winding, you kill the plant. 



The culm, or straw, is the trunk of the Grasses, Rushes, and 

 several other plants nearly allied to them, preserving still the 

 original signification of the Latin term culmus, from which it 

 is derived, 



ne gravidis procumbat culmus arhtfc. — Virg. Georg. i. 111. 



In its figure it is generally cylindrical, as in Wheat and 

 Barley; but in some few plants it is triangular, as in Sckce?ius 

 and Cyperus. In its structure it is hollow and jointed, as in 

 the Grasses ; or solid, that is, filled with a soft and spongy pith, 

 as in the Bulrush. 



The stipe, which is an anglicized spelling and pronuncia- 

 tion of the Latin term stipes, a club, or stake, — 



Stipitibus duris agitur. — JEneid vii. 524. 



is, in the language of botany, a sort of secondary trunk that 

 supports the foliage, at least with regard to the higher orders 

 of plants, and is peculiar to Palms; issuing annually from the 

 root for the first four or five years of the plant's growth, and, 

 for the future, from the summit of the main stem, which be- 

 gins now to appear. 



In their size trunks are to be found of all dimensions, from 

 that of the diminutive Draba that surmounts the parched wall, 

 to that of the lofty Mountain Palm that rears its head to the 

 clouds. This immense and gigantic tree, the Palma altissima 

 of Sloane, and the Areca oleracea of modern botanists, is a 

 native of the West Indies, growing to the height of one hun- 



