ANAGALLIS ARVENSIS. 137 



vegetable world. The fibro-vascular tissue is not only very dense, 

 but also very closely attached, so that long soaking and patient 

 teasing is required to display the spiral tissue. The logwood stain 

 which I have used upon the specimens has given to the spiral 

 tissue a pretty effect, and the advantage of being easily distinguish- 

 able. The growth from spiral to annular tissue is also readily seen, 

 and the staining of the tissue has rendered the dotted ducts very 

 distinct. In vegetable physiology, the spiral tissue contains the air, 

 while the ducts convey the sap from the root, through the stem, to 

 the leaves of the plant. Some of the ducts upon the slides show 

 also the scalariform character. 



The Leaves of Anagallis arvensis are opposite : some are ovate, 

 others lanceolate, generally sessile, although some of them possess 

 a short stalk. The leaves are reticulated, with a dark green upper 

 surface, and a lighter green with a greyish tinge beneath. The 

 under surface abounds in dots, which on examination appear like 

 clusters of coloured cells of a reddish tint, and which appear at 

 intervals as coloured dots showing through the thin epidermal tissue. 

 The leaves are destitute of hairs, and appear to the naked eye 

 entire, but under the microscope they display a pretty papilla-like 

 fringe of single cells running from the apex half way down the 

 margin of each leaf (see Fig. 7). The upper cuticle is not 

 readily detached, its cells are sinuous with thick cell-walls, and are 

 freely covered with stomata. The under cuticle can be easily stripped. 

 The cell-walls are also sinuous, but of a finer character than those of 

 the upper cuticle, and the stomata are far more abundant (Figs. 

 8 — 9). I have not detected any crystals in the leaves which have 

 been decolourised and stained, and they show no striking features 

 beyond the venation and cellular tissue. 



The Flower of the Scarlet Pimpernel is the most attractive por- 

 tion of the plant. I have already sketched its external beauty, and 

 will now treat of its anatomy. To the ordinary observer it appears 

 to have five petals, but if the botanist removes it from its calyx, it is 

 found to have but one petal with five deeply cut lobes. Each lobe 

 is seen under the microscope to be fringed with minute glandular 

 hairs. In Lindlefs School Botany the petal is described as being 

 minutely notched, but a very low-power objective will show that 

 this description is not correct. The notched appearance is easily 



