424 Prof. LiNDLEY on the Anatomy of the Roots q/'Ophrydeae. 



water. He also finds the Salep of the shops consisting, with the exception of 

 a few grains of unchanged starch, in great part of swelled, torn, gelatinous 

 skins, which become of a magnificent blue when moistened with the aqueous 

 solution of iodine. {Histoire des Drogues Simples, i. 573.) 



Raspail speaks of the new tubercles of Orchis as being rich in fsecula, and 

 he supposes that those chemists who have not been able to find it, examined 

 old shrivelled roots whose starch had been consumed by the plant in its 

 growth, instead of newly-formed roots. {Syst. de Chim. Organique, p. 54.) 



Finally, M. Payen, in his recent memoir upon Amidon, of which the first 

 part, without the plates, is all that I have yet seen {Ann. des Sc, n. s., x. 

 26.), describes Salep as containing grains of fsecula, formed into amorphous 

 masses which fill the cells. " Ce caractfere," he adds, " depend sans doute 

 de la temperature 61ev6e a laquelle la desiccation a commence ; les tubercles 

 etant alors tr^s humides la f^cule a du former empois en s'hydratant dans 

 chaque cellule ; de la encore la demitransparence de la plupart des petits tu- 

 bercules sees." 



The following account of the anatomy of the roots of Ophrydeous plants 

 will show that, notwithstanding the assertions of so many French writers 

 upon Salep, these tubercles contain very little starch, and that these authors 

 have mistaken for amylaceous matter what Berzelius terms vegetable mucus, 

 and Caventoii and Meisner a principle resembling Bassorine, the organic cha- 

 racters of which, in these plants, are extremely curious. 



The tubercles which form the roots of many South African Ophrydece pre- 

 sent, when dried, the appearance of bags filled with small pebbles ; the surface 

 of the roots being coarsely granular, as if the epidermis had contracted over 

 hard bodies in the inside. This is very remarkable in the dried fusiform roots 

 of Disa multifida. 



If a fresh root of Satyrium pallidum is divided transversely, the cause of 

 this appearance becomes evident. With its soft parenchyma are mixed a 

 great quantity of tough, firm, oval nodules, clear as water, and often twenty 

 times as large as the cells which surround them. These nodules are easily se- 

 parated from the tissue in which they are imbedded, when they are found to 

 l)e irregular polye(h-ons, resembling pebbles of cut rock crystal. Their fa- 



