The Yellow Crocus 



in degree. How are we to account for 

 the character which it still retains ? Be- 

 ginning at the bottom of the petal, let us 

 strip off the skin, as we can easily do, 

 from base to point of the inner face. We 

 have now made the petal colourless — 

 colourless, that is, so far as there is any- 

 thing valuable in colour. Nothing is left 

 but a pale, tawny, fleshy lamina, streaked 

 with part parallel, part radiating veins. 

 The space at the base of the petal still 

 remains, being more transparent than the 

 rest when we look through it, and still 

 changeful in different positions, though 

 only from light to shade, after the pearly 

 fashion of ordinary cellular tissue. Its 

 greater clearness is due partly to an in- 

 creased transparency of its cellular tissues, 

 and partly to its main thickness being 

 occupied by the vessels entering the 

 petal. Vessels are always very trans- 

 parent ; this quality enables us to trace 

 them with the naked eye wherever they 

 go, and of course they give transparency 

 wherever they happen to be numerous. 

 The cellular tissue is, on the contrary, 

 opaque and lustreless in the upper part 

 of the lamina, the glistening character 

 there becoming wholly lost : this little 

 dissection will enable us to understand 



23 



