220 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
ings entered in the several columns of the table are the nume- 
rators. 
5. As it would have been obviously unsatisfactory to select any 
particular kind of fibres for measurement, the‘plan I adopted was 
to tease out a pinch of the cotton until it lay pretty smooth ; from 
this I detached as thin a stratum as possible of about half an inch 
in width, which was placed on the compressorium in water. Then, 
commencing at one end, I passed the different parts in succession 
across the field of the microscope, and measured those that lay 
flattest and best situated for that purpose, without reference to 
their size or form. I did not at first note in the table the form 
of the fibres, but after a time it occurred to me to do so, as it is 
evident that the diameter of a flat thin fibre will, as a rule, be 
greater than a cylindrical one; indeed, it follows as a matter of 
course that if one portion of a hollow cylinder be pressed flat, it 
must measure half as much more than the cylindrical portion, 
z. €., in the ratio of the semi-circumference to the diameter. 
6. You will observe that I have used the terms round, roundish, 
flat, and flattish, in the table. J apply the term “round” toa 
fibre that is apparently round and solid, with considerable opacity, 
somewhat like a stout hair; but I do not mean to assert that 
such are in reality solid cylinders, they are possibly flattish fibres 
rolled up in such a way as to appear solid, and I reserve that 
point for further examination. 
7. Those termed “roundish” have a light line along their axis 
when seen at the upper focus, an effect often seen with hairs, and 
which led to the idea of hairs being tubular. 
8. The “ flattish’’ fibres have this line wider, and, a more or 
less, broad, opaque margin, which is rounded off so as to give the 
idea that a transverse section would be an ellipse of greater or 
less eccentricity. 
9. The “flat thin” fibres are exceedingly thin, flattened tubes, 
like pieces of ribbon, and without any appearance of internal 
thickening from secondary deposits. 
10. You will see by the following quotations that the use of 
some terms to describe the nature of the fibre was a necessity. 
Whether there be any kind of cotton in which a riband-like band 
is the common form I have yet to learn, but in the samples that 
I have examined, a flat riband-like fibre is mo¢ the rule, and in 
some varieties it is almost a rare exception ;—to proceed. 
11. The late Professor John Quekett in the 1st volume of his 
Lectures on Histology, speaking of cotton fibres, says they “are 
recognised as flattened and more or less twisted bands,” and his 
figure represents, as well as a wood engraving can be expected to 
do, what I call “thin flat fibres.” The writer of the article 
“Cotton” in the English Cyclopedia (a.p. 1854), says, “ They 
(z. e. the fibres) are long, weak tubes, which, when immersed in 
water and examined under the microscope by transmitted light, 
look like flat, narrow, transparent ribands, all entirely distinct 
from each other and with a perfectly even surface and uniform 
