34 
ORGANOGRAPHY, 
BOOK I: 
4. Of Raphides. 
13 
Among the tissue, and according to Raspail exclusively in 
the intercellular passages of plants, are found certain needle- 
shaped transparent bodies, lying either singly or in bundles, 
and called raphides. They were first discovered by Rafn, who 
found them in the milky juice of Euphorbia? ; afterwards they 
were met with by Jurine, in the leaves of Leucojum vernum, 
and elsewhere ; and they are now well known to all vegetable 
anatomists. If a common Hyacinth is wounded, a consider- 
able discharge of fluid takes place, and in this myriads of 
slender raphides (fig. 14.) are found floating; or if the cuticle 
of the leaf of Mirabilis Jalapa is lifted up, little whitish spots 
are observable, which are composed of them; all these are 
acicular in form, whence their name. But in the Cactus peru- 
vianus (fig. 13.) they are, according to Turpin, found in the 
inside of the bladders of cellular tissue, and, instead of being 
needle-shaped, have the form of extremely minute conglomer- 
ated crystals, which are rectangular prisms with tetraedral 
summits, some with a square, others with an oblong base. 
Crystals of a similar figure have been remarked by the same 
observer in Rheum palmatum (fig. 12.); and their presence, 
according to him, is sufficient to distinguish samples really 
from China and Turkey, from those produced in Europe. 
The former abound in these crystals, the latter have hardly 
any. 
The account given by Raspail is something different from 
this. He asserts that raphides are never found either in Cac- 
tus or elsewhere in the inside of the bladders of cellular tissue. 
