52 
ORGANOGRAPHY. 
BOOK I 
the question beyond all dispute. [Annales des Sciences, vol. xxi.) 
Nevertheless there are anatomists of high reputation who 
entertain a directly opposite opinion ; denying the existence 
of passages, and considering the stomates rather in the light 
of inlands. Nees von Esenbeck and Link have denied the 
existence of any perforation in the stomates, and considered 
that the supposed opening is a space more pellucid than the 
surrounding tissue, and that what seems a closed up slit is the 
thickened border of the space. Link further added in his 
Elementa (ed. 1. p. 225.), that the obscuration of the centre of 
the stomates is caused by a peculiar secretion of matter, as is 
plainly visible in Baryosma serratum. To the views of these 
writers is to be added the testimony of Brown [Suppl. prim. 
Prodr. p. 1.), who describes the stomates as glands which are 
really almost always imperforate, with a disk formed by a 
membrane of greater or less opaqueness, and even occasionally 
coloured; at the same time he speaks of the disk being, 
perhaps, sometimes perforated. Link, however, has now 
abandoned his first idea {^Elementa, ed. 2., vol. ii., p. 6.), re- 
cognising them as openings ; and most anatomists have come 
to the same conclusion. 
In no plants are stomates larger than in some Monocotyle- 
dons ; they are, therefore, the best subjects for examination 
for general purposes. In Crinum amabile they evidently con- 
sist of two kidney-shaped bodies filled with green matter, 
lying in an area of the cuticle smaller than those that sur- 
round it, and having their incurved sides next each other. 
In some, at the part where the kidney-shaped bodies come in 
contact, there is an elevated ridge, dark, as if filled with air, 
and having its principal diameter distinctly divided by a line. 
(Plate III. fig. II.) In this state the stomate is at rest: but 
in others the kidney-shaped bodies are much more curved; 
their sides are more separated from each other ; and there is 
no elevated ridge : at their former line of contact there is an 
opening so distinct and wide as to be equal to half the dia- 
meter of one of the kidney-shaped bodies. 
This structure of the stomate in Crinum amabile may be 
taken as the type of all others ; for, no doubt, they are all 
constructed upon a similar plan, though modified in different 
