CHAP. II. 
STOMATES. 
51 
2. Of Stomates. 
Fig. 14. 
ah c 
peculiar character, which appear connected with respiration, 
and which are called Stomates^ Stomata^ or Stomatia. ( Plate III. 
passim.) 
Stomates are passages through the cuticle, having the 
appearance of an oval space, in the centre of which is a slit 
that opens or closes according to circumstances, and lies above 
a cavity in the subjacent tissue. 
There is, perhaps, nothing in the structure of plants upon 
which more different opinions have been formed than these 
stomates. Malpighi and Grew, the latter of whom seems 
first to have figured them (t. 48., fig. 4.), call them openings 
or apertures, but had no exact idea of their structure. Mirbel 
also, for a long time, considered them pores, and figured 
them as such; admitting, however, that he suspected the 
openings to be an optical deception. De Candolle entertains 
no doubt of their being passages through the epidermis. He 
says their edge has the appearance of a kind of oval sphincter, 
capable of opening and shutting. The membrane that sur- 
rounds this sphincter is always continuous with that which 
constitutes the network of the epidermis : under the latter, and 
in the interval between the pore and the edge of the sphincter, 
are often found molecules of adhesive green matter [Organogr. 
i. 80.) ; and recently Adolphe Brongniart, in his beautiful 
figures of the anatomy of leaves, would seem to have settled 
E 2 
