56 Prof. G. Gulliver on Raphides. 
Mesembryez, which had been sown in pots and got confused 
with other pots containing seedlings of exotic Crassulacez, were 
all as easily and quickly distinguished by the same character. 
The raphides in all these instances, though smaller than in 
_ adult plants of the same species, were very plainly seen collected 
into bundles in the seed-leaves and infant stems and plumules. 
And the practical application of the raphidian diagnosis may be 
equally simple and sure in old plants at every period of their 
existence ; for, besides the evidence formerly given, it was found 
particularly serviceable in the absence of any other botanical 
character. Thus in a reserve bed containing several species or 
varieties of Ginothera, and many Phloxes, Campions, Rockets, 
and other plants, intended for removal when required, all the 
Onagracez were readily identified by the abundance of raphides 
in their roots and subterranean leaf-buds, before growth had 
revived, in the early spring. But there was a tough creeping 
root with stem-buds, certainly not an Cfnothera, and yet abound- 
ing in raphides. What could this be? As we were here puzzled, 
it was put into a pot for further observations, and soon became 
a good specimen of Asperula odorata, a plant of the Tapes 
bearing order Galiaceze. 
Finally, as to the opmion of Link and E. Quekett that ra- 
phides in plants are, like calculi in animals, ‘ nothing more 
than accidental deposits,” the sum of my experience, on the 
contrary, is that they are really such an intrinsic effect of the 
plant-life, from the cradle to the grave, of the species in which they 
abound, as to be quite as fundamentally and universally present 
therein as any other speciality or single diagnostic whatever, 
and moreover surely expository of an essential part of the very 
nature of those species. And, although, on a subject so novel 
and extensive, the results obtained by a single observer can only 
be offered provisionally, it appears to me that the present prac- 
tical applications are sufficient to prove the importance of raphides 
as natural characters; that their precise value in this point of 
view requires further and very extended researches, more espe- 
cially as regards the flora of the world; and that, so far as con- 
cerns the class Dicotyledones of the British Flora, the orders 
Balsaminacee, Onagracez, and Galiaceze are eminently entitled 
to be characterized as raphis-bearing plants. 
Edenbridge, May 30, 1864. 
[To be continued. } 
