54 Prof. G. Gulliver on Raphides. 



the British Flora, unless when expressly extended beyond it. 

 Of every order in Prof. Babington's 'Manual' I have examined 

 at least one species, often more, and sometimes the whole or 

 nearly the whole; and whenever raphides were found m any 

 order, all or the greater part of its species were manytimes ddi- 

 gently searched, as well as those of the orders between which the 

 raphis-bearing one might happen to stand. But as it was fre- 

 quently difficult for me to procure more than one specimen of a 

 plant, and still less easy to get every species of an order, and to be 

 sure of avoiding errors, these practical applications will be now 

 described provisionally, and yet not without a belief that their 

 utility and naturalness are likely to remain after a much more 

 complete series of valid tests than I have been able to apply. 

 The subject, even as limited in this paper, is so extensive a8 

 to require for its full elucidation the cooperation of many 

 labourers in different parts of the kingdom ; and any botanist 

 who may choose to try the reality of the raphidian character of 

 such an order as Onagracese may quickly and easily do so in 

 some of the most common plants throughout our country. 



In the last communication, additional evidence was given of 

 the validity and practicability of this character in GaliaceBe, and 

 that it is at least as remarkable in Balsaminacese and Onagracese. 

 Now these three are the only orders of our Dicotyledones that 

 can yet be truly characterized as raphis-bearers, — a fact which 

 I have already found very useful in cases where no other bota- 

 nical diagnosis was available. And hence, until this raphidian 

 character be proved either defective or more extensive, whenever 

 a British plant of that class be found abounding in raphides, it 

 must be referred to one or other of those three orders. 



But this conclusion will appear so paradoxical, rejecting the 

 raphis-bearing character of many trees and shrubs which are 

 commonly cited by authors as special examples of it, opposed 

 also to the current views on the subject generally in our best 

 works on phytotomy and to the neglect of it particularly in those 

 of systematic botany, that a few explanatory remarks may here 

 be repeated. 



When Schleiden states that " the needle-formed crystals, in 

 bundles of from twenty to thirty in a single cell, are present in 

 almost all plants,^' we can only certainly say that they must 

 be very difficult to detect, if ever present at all, in many entire 

 orders of British plants, and that, though the conclusion of such 

 an eminent observer is not to be lightly treated, it cannot yet 

 be reconciled with the facts so often disclosed in the course of 

 the present communications. 



Other statements, apparently coinciding with that of Schleiden, 

 when carefully examined both by their context and by the light 



