42 Prof. G. Gulliver on Raphides, 



not only of the importance of raphides, but that they have been 

 hitherto strangely neglected in systematic botany. Indeed they 

 afford such a weighty and essential natural character, often 

 available when all other diagnostics are utterly inapplicable, 

 and so truly expressive of the intimate economy of the plant, 

 that it must henceforth claim an eminent place in the descrip- 

 tions of any flora, and still more so in every true history of the 

 vegetable kingdom. 



Liliacece. — But very extensive observations are yet wanting to 

 enable us to define peremptorily the distribution and exact value 

 of raphides in this point of view ; for though we have seen that, 

 as far as regards the British plants yet examined, certain orders 

 are as constantly raphidiferous as others are not so, there are 

 still different orders, some of the members of which produce 

 raphides regularly and abundantly, and others either irregularly, 

 scantily, or not at all. Thus, of the order Liliacese, some of the 

 species abound in raphides, and others are devoid of them. In 

 the following examples, careful examinations were made, and 

 they are confined, in this paper, when not otherwise expressed, 

 to the leaves, for the sake of equal comparison. Raphides were 

 not found in Tulipa sylvestris, Fritillaria Meleagris, Lilium Mar- 

 tag on, L. candidum, L. aurantium, Allium Schoenoprasum, A. ur- 

 sinum, A. Cepa, smdA.Molj/ ; while raphides were always found 

 in Ornithogalum umbellatum, Scilla verna, S. peruviana, Endymion 

 nutans, Muscari racemosum, Ti'itoma media, and several species of 

 Yucca. 



Such an irregular distribution of raphides in the members of 

 one order might lead us to suppose that the fact must be con- 

 nected either with season, climate, or soil, — which, I believe, is 

 not entirely the case, because in some (though not all) of the species 

 mentioned the constancy of the results was verified under many 

 such conditions. Several of the plants were examined more than 

 once from various localities, and during different seasons and 

 years ; while Allium ursinum and Ornithogalum umbellatum were 

 particularly made the subjects of repeated and protracted ob- 

 servations, and always with the same results of no raphides in 

 the former and an abundance of them in the latter species. 

 Besides, any true raphidiferous plants, as Epilobium and many 

 others, will always be found abounding in raphides ; while, on 

 the contrary, there are many entire orders which I have repeatedly 

 searched in vain for raphides. In fact, this presence or absence 

 of raphides is alone a sufficient diagnosis between some species 

 of the order Liliacese. It will probably be objected that the 

 Onion, now marked as a plant not characterized as raphidiferous, 

 is the very one so often given by botanical writers as an example 

 of a raphis-bearing species. But the crystals which have been 



