6 GULLIVER, ON RAPHIDES. 
ton’s ‘Manual of British Botany,’ taking the objects in lineal 
sequence as they occur in that book, the exotic Flora will 
only be noticed when some of its members may be cited as 
additional evidence as to the character of a British order. 
DIcOTYLEDONS. 
Of this class I have never seen true raphides in any of our 
trees and shrubs, nor in any of our Spurges. The confusion 
arising from the vague application of the term raphides to all 
microscopic crystals in plants has led to the prevailing state- 
ments as to the frequency of raphides in the Lime, Elm, and 
many other trees, &c.; while the starch-sticks of the latex of 
the Spurges, as described in the ‘ Annals of Natural History’ 
for March, 1862, p. 209, have probably been mistaken for saline 
crystals. Only three orders of British Dicotyledons can as yet 
be characterised as raphis-bearers, and these are— 
Balsaminacee, Onagracee, and Rubiacee.—In our Flora 
this character isso truly diagnostic that by it a plant of either 
of these three orders may be easily distinguished at any 
period of its growth, even in the seed-leaves, from the plants 
of its neighbouring orders; and the diagnosis has never yet 
failed in the many trials which I have made of all the 
exotic species at my command of the first two orders, 
excepting Montinia before mentioned. Even in the some- 
what irregular members of Onagracez, Circea and Lopezia, 
the character is as good as in the other genera, and I have 
examined one or more species of all the sections placed by 
Lindley under Onagraceze. But the exotic Rubiacez, com- 
prising very different plants, divided by that eminent botanist 
into the two orders Galiaceze and Cinchonacee, afford different 
results. While I have never found any plant of Galiacee, 
native or foreign, devoid of raphides, I have always failed 
to find them at all im the large or shrubby Cinchonacee ; 
and yet in the herbaceous species of this order raphides 
occur as in Galiacez, that is to say, commonly less in size 
and quantity than in Onagracez. But in the trees or shrubs 
of Cinchonacee spheraphides are beautiful and abundant. 
In the event of a revision of the old order Rubiacez, sys- 
tematic botanists will have to consider what value may belong 
to these characters. And, besides the interest which I have 
shown to be possessed by the raphidian character in exotic 
plants, as detailed in the ‘ Popular Science Review,’ the re- 
markable conflux and limitation of this character to three 
widely separated orders of our native Dicotyledons so surely 
indicate an important and intrinsic function of the plants of 
