570 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
are fruitful of true raphides. Tlius tlie spliaeraphides of 
CactaceWj Geraniacece, &c.^ were either confounded with or not 
properly distinguished from the raphides of Araceoe, and 
Orchidacece ; while in this last order raphides are by no means 
confined to the sepals ; and there are certainly extensive groups 
of Monocotyledons remarkable for their want of raphides. 
Probably the starch-sticks of Euj^horhiacece * were mistaken 
by Kafn and others for saline crystals. Nor could I ever find 
true raphides at all in the Tulip and Onions ; though the bulb- 
scales of a section of these last-named plants constantly afibrd 
beautiful prismatic crystals of oxalate of lime and magnesia, f 
And as to any liliaceous plant/"’ the spermoderm of Panda- 
nacece and the little whitish spots on the Marvel of Peru^ 
which last is a species belonging to the order Nyctaginaceoe, 
there are many Lilies regularly devoid of raphides ; while these 
acicular crystals and their cells abound^ more or less^ through- 
out the frame of the members of the orders of which only 
those spots of one species and the spermoderm of another 
group are noticed. 
And in all the species yet examined by me_, of these and other 
orders presently to be mentioned_, so deep and extensive is this 
character^ that it may sometimes be proved in the ovule_, and 
regularly in the seed-leaves^ and more or less difiused thence- 
forth throughout the plant; nay^ even maintaining its constancy 
where the art of floriculture has modified or destroyed some of 
the recognized and most essential characters, as shown, for 
example, by the bundles of raphides within their much larger 
and very soft cells of the numerous double-flowered varieties of 
the Balsam. In short, so far from raphides being accidental 
deposits, the sum of my researches on this point is to the efiect, 
on the contrary, that they are really such an intrinsic result of 
the plant-life, from the cradle to the grave, of the species in 
question, as not only to be truly indicative of an essential 
part of the very nature of those species, and consequently 
of relative value in the description of their characters, but 
capable also of afibrding, in certain cases, a diagnosis at 
once as original and prevailing, between plants of allied orders, 
as any other single character yet employed by systematical 
botanists for this purpose. 
Hence the belief that, as regards the raphidian subject, 
important method might displace trifling confusion. And so 
no wonder that I should cheerfully respond in the ajBBrmative 
to the request of the learned editor of the Popular Science 
Review for a contribution on the nature and diagnostic value 
* Annals of Natural History, March, 1862. 
t Ibid.. April and June, 1864. 
