GULLIVER, ON RAPHIDES. 7 
anatomy of the fruit of Umbelliferee, and by outlines quite 
as accurate, plain, and instructive as those engraved by 
Andersson and other foreigners of the parts of fructification 
in Cyperaceze and Gramineze. 
But as to the value of raphides as natural characters, and 
to their importance in the vegetable economy at all, doubts 
such as those above cited will at present be entertained. 
Schleiden asserts that “ the needle-formed crystals, in bundles 
of from twenty to thirty in a single cell, are present in 
almost all plants,” and that “inorganic crystals are rarely 
met with in cells in a full state of vitality’ (‘ Principles of 
Scientific Botany,’ translated by Dr. Lankester, pp. 6 and 
91). And under the head of “‘ Raphides,” in the last edition 
of the valuable ‘ Micrographic Dictionary’ (which I now 
quote from memory), we are told that there are few of the 
higher plants that do not contain them; that they are very 
abundant in Monocotyledones generally, as well as in Cacta- 
cez, Euphorbiacez, Urticacer, &c., among Dicotyledones ; 
and that they occur in vast quantities in the leaves of Ara- 
ceze, Musacez, Liliacez, Iridacee, and Polygonacez, and 
in the sepals of Orchidaceze and Geraniacee. The meaning 
of the illustrious German is plain ; and that sphzeraphides and 
other kinds of crystals are all called raphides in the ‘ Micro- 
graphic Dictionary’ is equally certain, as any one may see 
by comparing the raphides of Orchis and Arum with the 
sphzeraphides of Parietaria and Geranium. 
Let us therefore note a few of the leading facts which I 
have at present obtained, premising that the term raphides 
will be restricted throughout this paper to the needle forms 
generally occurring in bundles, so easily broken up that the 
individual crystals are very apt, under gentle friction, to 
separate from each other and from the tissue in which they 
are produced. We shall thus exclude even other acicular 
but less slender crystals occurring either singly or two, 
three, or four together, sometimes as if partly fused into each 
other, and by no means easily separable. either from one 
another or from the plant-tissue in which they exist; and, 
of course, the curious starch-sticks of the latex of Euphorbi- 
acer (‘ Ann. Nat. Hist.’ for March, 1862, p. 209) will be 
totally rejected from the order of saline crystals. 
Adopting this course, we shall soon perceive that the for- 
mation of raphides must be an important and special function 
in the economy of certain plants, and that the result of this 
function may afford valuable natural characters, sometimes 
more universally available than any other single character 
ever before adopted or proposed. 
