424 Prof. Laxpzey on the Anatomy of the Roots of Ophrydeæ. 
water. He also finds the Salep of the shops consisting, with the exception of 
a few grains of unchanged starch, in great part of swelled, torn, gelatinous 
skins, which become of a magnificent blue when moistened with the aqueous 
solution of iodine. (Histoire des Drogues Simples, i. 573.) 
Raspail speaks of the new tubercles of Orchis as being rich in fzecula, and 
he supposes that those chemists who have not been able to find it, examined 
old shrivelled roots whose starch had been consumed by the plant in its 
growth, instead of newly-formed roots. (Syst. de Chim. Organique, p. 54.) 
Finally, M. Payen, in his recent memoir upon Amidon, of which the first 
part, without the plates, is all that I have yet seen (Ann. des Sc., n. s., x. 
26.), describes Salep as containing grains of fæcula, formed into amorphous 
masses which fill the cells. “Ce caractère,” he adds, * dépend sans doute 
de la temperature élevée à laquelle la désiceation a commencé ; les tubercles 
étant alors trés humides la fécule a dû former empois en s'hydratant dans 
chaque cellule; de la encore la demitransparence de la plupart des petits tu- 
bercules secs.” 
The following account of the anatomy of the roots of Ophrydeous plants 
will show that, notwithstanding the assertions of so many French writers 
upon Salep, these tubercles contain very little starch, and that these authors 
have mistaken for amylaceous matter what Berzelius terms vegetable mucus, 
and Caventou and Meisner a principle resembling Bassorine, the organic cha- 
racters of which, in these plants, are extremely curious. 
The tubercles which form the roots of many South African OpArydec pre- 
sent, when dried, the appearance of bags filled with small pebbles; the surface 
of the roots being coarsely granular, as if the epidermis had contracted over 
hard bodies in the inside. This is very remarkable in the dried fusiform roots 
of Disa multifida. 
"im a fresh root of Satyrium pallidum is divided transversely, the cause of 
1S appearance becomes evident. With its soft parenchyma are mixed a 
great quantity of tough, firm, oval nodules, clear as water, and often twenty 
times as large as the cells which surround 
them. These nodules are easily se- 
parated from the tissue in Which the i 
: y are imbedded, 
x T ed, when they are found to 
resembling pebbles of cut rock crystal. Their fa- 
