424 Thiselton-Dyer . — Morphological Notes. 
Markfeldt did not, however, have the opportunity of ob- 
serving the persistence of the leaf-traces in stems of con- 
siderable size. It is the object of this note to point out that 
in such cases they form a conspicuous but unnoticed feature 
in the wood. 
Fig. 3 (PI. XXII) is a reproduction of a life-size photo- 
graph of part of the longitudinal section of the trunk of 
Araucaria imbricata . presented to the museums of the Royal 
Botanic Gardens in 1890 by the Right Honourable the Earl 
of Ducie, F.R.S., at whose seat, Tortworth Court in Gloucester- 
shire, it was grown. The trunk from which the specimen was 
obtained was one foot four inches in diameter at the base. 
An annual ring has been cut through tangentially and is seen 
to be perforated by the leaf-traces. The photograph also 
shows sections of other leaf-traces traversing successive annual 
rings. In this case the sections are necessarily more oblique. 
The material does not enable me to ascertain whether the 
leaf-traces are prolonged indefinitely. But this point will no 
doubt be cleared up by Mr. Seward, who proposes to make 
a thorough examination of the trunk of the historic tree 
formerly living at Kew. This was introduced by Menzies in 
1796, but died in 1892. 
The same structure is shown no less conspicuously in a 
specimen of the wood of Araucaria Cunninghamii received 
from the Technological Museum, Sydney, in 1891. It is no 
doubt a characteristic feature of the wood of every species of 
the genus. It may be noted that according to De Bary 
(Comparative Anatomy of the Vegetative Organs of the Phane- 
rogams and Ferns, p. 513), ‘ the demarcation of the annual 
rings’ in Araucaria has been denied by some writers. Fig. 3 
shows that in this respect the wood is in no way exceptional. 
As far as I am aware this curious structure is peculiar to 
Araucaria amongst Coniferae. I had thought that some 
indication of it might have been found in Abies . But an 
examination of the extensive series of wood specimens in the 
Kew museums has failed to detect any evidence of its 
occurrence. 
