PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 295 
sketch convey a correct representation of what he had seen, but 
that the vascular bundles had not intruded from some other 
source during the manipulation. Spiral cells have been found in 
certain fangi, and analogy would possibly lead one to expect their 
being met with belonging to a lichen. He thought that some of 
the cells he had seen in the preparation shown to him by Admiral 
Jones, presented somewhat of a “scalariform”’ appearance, and 
this present record, especially if hereafter confirmed, would be 
extremely valuable. 
Admiral Jones exhibited the original specimen of Hvernia pru- 
nastri, bearing the black dots, within the substance of one of 
which he had found the remarkable spiral vessels forming the sub- 
ject of the present communication. 
Mr. Archer, who had to thank Admiral Jones for having kindly 
afforded him an early opportuniry to examine the singular pre- 
paration obtained from the lichen in question, believed that the 
drawings thereof, which he had endeavoured to make, conveyed at 
least a correct idea of the vascular bundles themselves thus found 
in a plant so unexpected. He did not consider these “ vessels” 
were any of them “scalariform,” or “annular,’”’ but were strictly 
“spiral.” After examining the specimen very carefully, he was 
in very few instances able to see the ends of these spiral vessels, 
owing to their being, without injuring the preparation, so inex- 
tricably immersed in the brown cellular mass, mixed with frag- 
ments of coarse pellucid fibres, which together seemed to form 
the substance or tissue producing the dark dots apparent on the 
surface of the lichen, and which had first attracted Admiral Jones’s 
attention. Mr. Archer stated, however, that where he had been 
able to see the extremities of the vessels he had found that they 
gradually tapered ; and he drew attention to one instance depicted 
in the sketch, in which one had been broken off by the pressure, 
and the fibre uncoiled—thus proving its strictly spiral character. 
These vessels, indeed, by mutual contact, sometimes acquired 
somewhat flattened surfaces for a considerable length, and the 
fibres, following the angles thus produced, assumed sometimes an 
apparently transverse (“annular’’), or, when the angle of the 
vessel rendered itself especially evident, a sub-scalariform appear- 
ance ; but he thought, nevertheless, that the fibres were through- 
out actually spiral. Mr. Archer adverted to what appeared to 
him to be a singularity of the vessels forming these vascular 
bundles. This was, that not infrequently certain (sometimes 
several) vessels, running up and down, parallel with the other 
vessels of the bundle, upon meeting, did not overlap, but suddenly 
diverged at right angles from the rest, and were prolonged con- 
currently in a direction vertical to them, and parallel and juxta- 
posed to one another, the entire bundle thus forming somewhat 
the figure of a T. This seemed to be something different from 
the bundles merely giving off what might be called branches, or 
