36 HALF-AN-HOUR 



tion of the material on a glass slip, and moistening with water, 

 holding down with the tip of the left middle finger, and draw- 

 ing the razor carefully from left to right. With a little practice 

 it is not difficult thus to obtain very thin slices, showing all the 

 structures. The sections can be floated to where they are wanted, 

 or removed with a very fine sable pencil, and put up permanently 

 in glycerine. 



These remarks will answer questions put some little time ago 

 by a member as to obtaining sections of leaf-fungi. It must be 

 remembered that the structures are exceedingly delicate, will not 

 bear drying, and therefore cannot be satisfactorily mounted in 

 balsam. 



Early in the season the mycelium will be found bearing globu- 

 lar spores with a granular cuticle — the uredo form. These are 

 succeeded later in the year by 3-4 septate asci ; from each chamber 

 of which is emitted in germination a long slender thread, bearing a 

 minute reniform sporidmm. The full signification of these facts is 

 not yet ascertained. 



Stellate Hairs from Niphobolus lingua (Plate 3, Fig. 4). — 

 This fern and the Platycerium alckorne, both yielding stellate 

 hairs, belong to the PolypodicEe. I have a small portion of a 

 New Zealand fern, kindly given me by E. G. Piper, of the Old 

 Change Microscopical Society, widely known as the inventor of 

 the portable horizontal slide cabinets. The piece of fern I 

 allude to shows thickly-clustered stellate hairs amongst the fruc- 

 tification, very beautifully. 



Maple, trans, sec. (Plate 3, Figs. 5, 6). — If an engineer were 

 shown the ends of a number of pipes entering into some piece 

 of complicated machinery, he would probably, almost before 

 asking their uses, wish to learn something of the character of 

 the tubes in their length ; the arrangements for elasticity in the 

 one case, for rigidity in another, for porousness in a third set, 

 and so on. Just such explanatory sections are required^ when 

 only transverse sections are given on a slide. These merely 

 illustrate the -arrangement of the ends of the tubes (as in the 

 above supposed case, how they are packed), but reveal none 

 of the essential characters of ducts, fibres, cells. As botanical 

 illustrations they are to that extent imperfect. These remarks 

 apply specially to the trans, sec. of Maple before us, but not 

 less to the major proportion of wood sections ordinarily seen. 



Mercurialis, Sphseraphides in (Plate 3, Fig. 8). — Thanks 

 to the indefatigable energy of Professor Gulliver, the importance 

 of studying the Raphidian characters of plants is becoming 



