FIBRO-CELLULAR TISSUE. 
79 
the appearance of pits or pores. It is one of the most 
common vegetable tissues, and is generally met with 
in the pith and other light parts of plants. The 
material known as Chinese rice-paper, is not really 
paper , but a thin shaving of a species of the genus 
JEschynomene. I have often heard ladies complain 
of the difficulty of getting the colour to lie smoothly 
on this material, which is readily accounted for by 
the fact that it is composed of a series of large cells 
(Fig. 66), the walls of which are minutely porous. A 
spurious kind of rice-paper, procured from a species of 
Desmanthus, ( D . natans ,) is still more difficult to draw 
on than the last ; the walls of many of the cells being 
dotted with large pores. 
fig. 66. 
FIG. 67 . 
Thin slice of Chinese rice-paper 
(. /Eschynomene ) , 
Porous tissue of the Dragon 
palm. 
The most striking example of porous tissue is that 
from the oldest living inhabitant on the surface of our 
globe, the Dracaena draco , or Dragon-palm of Tene- 
riffe. In a section I possess of this Palm , the wall 
of every cell (Fig. 67), however small, is covered with 
