Branner.] 464 {April 18, 
later, becomes entangled in the mass, or that it has been cut across in 
making the section. With a hard stem this is invariably the result, but if 
the stem be a decayed one, in which the cellular tissue has disintegrated 
and left the bundles more or less free, the direction of a bundle may be 
followed with more or less certainty. Beginning with one of these where 
it curves inward and downward from the base of a frond, it may be traced 
inward to or near the centre, then downward, gradually approaching the 
circumference again. In this lower part of the bundle, however, the 
angle of divergence from a parallel with axis and periphery is so small in 
most palms, and the little curves made by the bundle in crossing others 
so misleading and confusing, that it is with some difficulty one can appre- 
ciate the tact that the bundles are not all parallel to each other and to the 
axis of the stem. If, however, the internodes are short, and the trunk is 
comparatively large, we may expect to find this angle more defined. This 
is very marked in the rhizomes of the so called trunkless palms* upon 
which the fronds are crowded in the shortest possible length of trunk. In 
these rhizomes this direction of the lower extremity of a division of a 
fibro-vascular bundle is visible at a glance. On approaching the per- 
iphery of the trunk the bundle is found to decrease in size, and finally it 
breaks off and appears to end blindly in the mass of other bundles near 
the surface. As far as can be made out then, in a full grown stem, by 
this method of dissection, this is what we find the course of the fibro-vas- 
cular bundles to be: from the base of the frond they curve sharply in- 
wards to the centre, and then gradually outward to the surface, and there 
end. Ifit were possible to take up the bundles in any part of a stem, and 
follow them wpwards, one after another, it would be found that they all 
connect, sooner or later, with fronds or spadicest (or their scars), and 
that none of them end blindly on the internode 
So far I have spoken of tracing a bundle downward from the insertion 
of the frond. To this method of dissection is largely due the uncertainty 
about the lower extremity of a division. By examining the apex, or 
growing part of the trunk, it may be seen that these bundles do not end 
blindly at their lower extremities upon the surface of the stem, but that 
they are connected in sections or divisions$ from the base to the apex, 
one with another, and one on top of another. 
* In classifying palm stems according to their structure, Von Mohl made a 
sub-division of the rhizomes of trunkless palms, but made no investigation of 
them on account of lack of material. V. Ray Soc., 1849, pp. 6-7. 
}t Dr, Von Martius does not mention bundles connecting with spadices, 
{In his ‘*Text-book on Botany’’ (Ed, of 1879), Dr. Gray gives a figure of a palm 
trunk which represents the fibro-vascular bundles coming to the surface very 
much at random, and bending outward all through the stem, This is not what 
is seen ina palm stem, especially if the internodes are of any considerable 
length, but the bundles turn out to the fronds or sears only, and never to inter- 
nodes, 
¢I have spoken of the parts of a bundle between the points of branching as 
divisions, 
