GULLIVER, ON RAPHIDES. 5 
in the latest, truly valuable, and most comprehensive books 
of systematic botany. Therefore it is hoped that this 
memoir may pave the way for British botanists to pursue 
at least some part of this subject, and with the effect of 
establishing a few diagnoses at once novel and true, easy 
and useful, in their own Flora. To this end raphides will be 
chiefiy considered now; and, for the sake of perspicuity, 
short characters first given of raphides, crystal prisms, and 
spheraphides, leaving casual exceptions to be dealt with in- 
cidentally, and referring for measurements, more particular 
descriptions, and further information, to the October number 
of the ‘ Popular Science Review.’ 
Raphides are the well-known needle-shaped crystals occur- 
ring in bundles within an oval or oblong cell. They are very 
easily separable from each other and from their cell; each 
raphis is generally without any obvious faces or angles on 
the shaft, which gradually vanishes, without any angular ap- 
pearance, to a point at either end. 
Crystal prisms are also acicular forms, but occur, for the 
most part, scattered singly, seldom more than two or three 
in contact, and then as if partly fused together; they are 
with difficulty separated from the plant-tissue or from each 
other; faces and angles are always plain on their shafts, 
which do not gradually taper to points at the ends, but pre- 
sent either variously sloping angular shapes or pyramids 
there. These prisms are for the most part larger, and some- 
times smaller, than raphides. The best examples of crystal 
prisms occur in exotic plants, as Quillaja, Guajacum, Four- 
-croya, and [ris ; they may be seen, too, in most of our Iri- 
daceze, and, of smaller size, with occasional modifications of 
form, in the ovary-coat of British Cynarocephalee, and in 
the bulb-scales of the Onion and Shallot. - 
Speraphides are more or less rounded bodies, aggregations 
of minute crystals, sometimes with a granular surface, and 
often with the tips of the crystals jutting so as give a stellate 
appearance to the spheraphides. This term includes the 
conglomerate raphides of Quekett and the cystoliths and 
crystal glands of Continental writers. Sphzraphides occur 
in very distinct cells, and sometimes so regularly in acellular 
network as to form that which I have depicted under the 
name of sphzraphid-tissue. Good examples of this tissue 
occur in the leaves or sepals of our Lythracez, Geraniacee, 
&c., and in the leaves and bark of exotic Araliaceze. Sphe- 
raphides are more or less abundant in many orders of the 
British Flora. 
And now, proceeding in company with Professor Babing- 
