2 GULLIVER, ON RAPHIDES. 
larly the treasures in question of our own Flora, ever bounti- 
fully spread before us for the prosecution of the inquiry, and 
well fitted to afford many agreeable and instructive “ half- 
hours with the microscope.” 
Though nothing like a primary importance is claimed for 
the raphidian character, it is constant in and diffused through- 
out the species, snd sometimes exhibits the only visible dis- 
tinction at all, as in fragments of plants; while I believe 
that a fair examination will prove that raphides may give a 
diagnosis at once as fundamental and universal, and as simple 
and truly natural, between plants of some different and 
proximate orders, as any one of the secondary characters 
heretofore used for this purpose in systematic botany. That 
raphides are a true exponent of an essential function of the 
cell-life is shown by their constancy in certain plants ; 
bearing in mind, too, that the question is not merely one of 
such saline crystals as have ever yet been made by the art 
of the chemist. An excellent observer, Edwin Quekett, 
thought he had formed them artificially, and Mr. Rainey has 
given several very instructive observations concerning the 
mineral structure of vegetable and animal cells. But John 
Quekett, Payen, and others, came to the conclusion that 
raphides either have an organic basis or pellicle ; and certain it 
is that they commonly occur in bundles, within a living and 
beautiful cell, the whole forming an organism as inimitable 
by mere chemistry as a spore oragrain of pollen. We must, 
therefore, attach a far higher meaning to raphides than would 
be implied only by the term crystals. 
Concerning the exact value in systematic botany of the 
raphidian character, far more observations are required than 
I have been able to make. As these are extended, more or 
less irregularities and exceptions will surely be found, some 
in proof of and others irreconcilable with the rule, especially 
in the Flora of the World. Among exotic species I have 
already met with anomalies in the Palms, Vines, an Onagrad, 
and a Chenopod. But a close examination might show that 
many of these exceptions are rather apparent than real. The 
abundance of raphides throughout the frame of the foreign 
Thelyyonum, as well as the thicker, larger, and angular crys- 
tals in the testa of that plant, cannot yet be reconciled with 
our present knowledge of the intimate structure of the species 
of English Chenopodiaceze. But the Palms may, in truth, in- 
clude more than one order. The deviation in Vines occurs in 
Rhaganus, a genus lately removed, on other grounds, from this 
order ; and Montinia, in which I have failed to find raphides, 
perhaps does not really belong to the order Onagracee. 
