2 3 - Jeffrey and Torrey . — Transitional Herbaceous Dicotyledons. 
Urticales of the presence of foliar rays might be multiplied, but the single 
illustration will suffice, particularly as one of us has recently figured the 
similar condition in the common Stinging-Nettle, Urtica urens ( 3 ). 
Before taking leave of the Urticales, it will be well to figure for the 
Fibre-Ramie the result on the organization of the leaf-ray of the thinning 
of the stem in its upper region. Fig. n, PI. XI, represents an entire nodal 
transverse section of Boehmeria nivea. The leaf traces are seen, three in 
number, as in the stouter region of the axis. Their topographical relations 
are, however, modified as a result of the thinner woody cylinder. Since the 
cylinder of wood does not appreciably exceed in radial dimension that of 
the foliar trace, the mass of parenchyma radially subtending the foliar trace 
in the lower and thicker region of the stem is necessarily absent and the 
foliar storage tissues are represented only by the parenchyma, which flanks 
the leaf-trace on either side. This flanking parenchyma compensates for its 
reduced radial development by a correspondingly increased longitudinal 
extension. As a consequence of this condition, the cylinder in Fig. n. 
PI. XI, is much more clearly broken up into distinct bundles (naturally 
separated from one another by foliar rays) than is the case with the more 
woody lower region of the axis shown in Fig. 15, PI. XII. Fig. 12, PI. XI, 
shows a portion of Fig. 1 1 , much more highly magnified. The foliar trace lies 
in the centre, and occupies an outstanding position in regard to the strands of 
the stem on either side, from which it is separated by the flanking foliar 
parenchyma. 
Fig. 20, PI. XII, shows a complete view of the nodal region of a four- 
year-old axis of the genus Xanthorhiza . This Ranunculaceous genus has 
been figured by the authors (op. aV., Fig. 12) of the article referred to above 
as furnishing evidence in favour of their view that there are no foliar rays in 
the aerial axis of herbaceous forms. It is clear from our illustration of the 
stem of this somewhat woody herbaceous representative of the Ranun- 
culaceae that there are numerous radial bands extending through all the 
four annual rings and corresponding to dark radially directed structures, the 
leaf-traces. Fig. 21, PI. XII, shows a detail of a three-year-old stem of the 
same species including three foliar traces and their corresponding leaf-rays. 
To make the situation still more clear, a tangential view of two foliar rays 
with their included foliar traces is shown in Fig. 22, PI. XII. It is thus 
abundantly clear that the genus Xanthorhiza , selected by our critics to 
illustrate the absence of foliar rays in the Ranunculaceae, serves them very 
badly in this respect, since well-developed rays are seen not only in sections 
through the nodal region, but almost equally well in those which pass 
through the internode. In fact, it may be stated that, except in the genus 
Paeonia , which is to be regarded as perhaps the most primitive representa- 
tive of the Ranunculaceae proper in the Northern Hemisphere, the only 
rays present in the woody cylinder are those to which we have applied the 
