256 RECORD: STRUCTURE OF CERTAIN WOODS 
in size. In many woods the fibers show a gradual instead of ab- 
rupt diminution in caliber and the feature just mentioned is 
absent or indistinct. It may require careful maceration to deter- 
mine whether or not the fibers are storied, particularly in woods 
with irregular rays. The fact that the fibers are so interlaced 
and dove-tailed together prevents woods with storied structure 
from being weakened or made brittle thereby. 
In Herminiera elaphroxylon Guill. & Perr., the wood cells (" pali- 
sade tracheids’’ of Jaensch, 3, p. 269) are parenchymatous and 
arranged in regular stories. Some of the cells are subdivided but 
not very regularly. The low uniseriate rays are storied while the 
large ones (which may contain vessels) are not. The vessel seg- 
ments are mostly of the same length as the height of the tiers but 
according to Wiesner (5, p. 20) some of them may be subdivided. 
The wood fibers, which are distributed in narrow layers, are three 
times the length of the other elements and have localized pit areas 
at the constrictions. Solereder (6, p. 276) figures Aeschynomene 
sp. with the parenchymatous wood cells much pitted at the ends. 
The present writer did not have opportunity to study woods of this 
genus but found much the same structure in Erythrina spp., except 
that all or nearly all of the rays are large and the wood fibers in the 
scattered bands are apparently not storied. The parenchymatous 
cells making up the ground mass are large, thin-walled, blunt- 
ended, and usually subdivided into two cells about the vessels. 
The markings vary from distinct in some specimens to barely vis- 
ible without lens in others. 
Where the elements of the wood are definitely storied it is, of 
course, to be expected that the same arrangement will likewise 
appear in the secondary phloem. In the limited number of stems 
with bark examined by the writer this was found to be the case 
and in some instances, Dalea spinosa for example, the feature was 
more distinct on the inner surface of the bark than in the wood- 
An unusual case was found in Olneya tesota Gray, where the inner 
surface of the bark exhibits, under the lens, fine but distinct and 
fairly regular cross-lines (150-160 per inch) without, apparently, 
any corresponding structure in the wood. Under the compound 
microscope the vessel segments and wood parenchyma strands are 
indistinctly storied, but the rays and apparently the fibers are 
