1885.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 27 



The President appointed Mr. Wall, Mr. Shultz, and Mr. 

 Mead a Committee of Nomination to prepare a list of names of 

 Members to be recommended by them for election as officers for 

 the ensuing year, and the Committee were instructed to present 

 their report at the next regular meeting of the Society, 



THE MEDULLARY RAYS OF THE TAMARACK. 



Mr. P. H. Dudley said: "My 'section ' of the wood of the Tam- 

 arack was made while the wood was green. Disturbance of the 

 cell-contents, — starch, resin, etc., — by boiling, was thus avoided. 

 The tree was felled on the 27th of November, and it had four- 

 teen annular rings, eight of which were duramen. I have exam- 

 ined the ligneous tissue of thirty species of Coniferee, and have 

 observed in the medullary rays of the Tamarack a great variety 

 of interesting features, some of which distinguish this from the 

 other species, with the partial exception of the White Spruce. 



" A tangential section exhibits most of the medullary rays in" 

 single plates. When the plates number two or more, they usually 

 inclose a large canal, and then the section of the bundle is lenti- 

 form in contour. 



" In the radial longitudinal section, small lenticular cavities of 

 the peculiar kind which marks all conifers in their tangential 

 section, are exhibited in abundance in the one or two series of 

 cells at each of the two margins of a medullary plate. The sep- 

 tum separating the divisions of a double-convex cavity is 

 strongly thickened at its centre. Some of the cavities are plano- 

 convex, having no counterpart on the other side of the cell wall. 

 The walls of the cells that lie between the two marginal tracts, 

 show lenticular cavities rarely, and then, except occasionally in 

 the central row or rows, in only a half-developed state. Instead, 

 they exhibit pits of the shape of wells and of funnels, extending 

 to the boundary lamella but never through it. Neither these 

 pits nor the lenticular cavities are evenly distributed, being at 

 some points scattered, at others clustered. 



" The ends of the cells are almost universally oblique to the 

 sides, and their section is oftener curved than straight. 



" The openings communicating between the marginal ray-cells 

 and the vertical cells next to which they lie, are generally circu- 

 lar in form, and centrally perforated, like the bordered pits seen 

 in the vertical cells, but much smaller than those. Of the rest 



