STRUCTURE OF THE PALM-STEM. 



INTRODUCTION. 



A minute anatomical examination of the Palms is of 

 especial importance in regard to the anatomy and phy- 

 siology of plants, because the characters of the Mono- 

 cotyledons are most clearly exhibited in them, and they 

 therefore afford the most favorable means of acquiring 

 satisfactory ideas of the structure and growth of this great 

 class of plants. As the earlier phytotomists had devoted 

 but little care to the examination of Palm-sterns,* these 

 suddenly acquired very great importance when Daubenton, 

 in the examination of the Date-palm, believed that he 

 found the vascular bundles proceeding to the young leaves, 

 becoming developed in the interior of the stem, surrounded 

 by the vascular bundles running to the older leaves. This 

 proposition, forming an epoch in the history of Phytotomy, 

 first appeared in its full importance when Desfontainesf 

 showed that, not only in the Date-palm, but in Mono- 

 cotyledons generally, the wood has the form of scattered 

 vascular bundles, and that the vascular bundles which run 

 to the leaves come from the centre of the stem. This 



' Vide Grew's Examination of Calamus, Anat. of Plants, p. 104. 



f Mem. sur 1'Organisat. d. Monoc. (Mem. de PInstitut National, t. i, 478). 

 According to a brief notice published by Mirbel (Comptes Rendus, 12 Juin, 

 L843), the first discovery belongs to Desfontaines, he having already, in his 

 c Travels in Algiers/ expressed in a few words the idea which lies at the 

 foundation of his system. 



