66 
EIGHTH REPORT. 
a point or eye.” As every agricultural sophomore now knows, a typical 
grain is ovate, much flattened and very smooth. 
Again, the cell walls in the interior of a grain of wheat are extremely 
thin and delicate, but the illustration in “How Crops Grow,” make 
them thick as in the wood of basswood. 
On page 247, “When a potato is boiled the starch grains swell and 
the cells, in consequence, separate from each other, a practical result 
of which is to make the potato mealy.” How is it with most boiled 
or baked potatoes which do not enlarge or break open and yet the starch 
grains enlarge? 
On page 247, “The pulp of an orange is the most evident example of 
cell tissue. The individual cells of the ripe orange may be easily sepa¬ 
rated from each other,” and are a quarter of an inch long. A moderate 
magnifier reveals the fact that the walls of these so-called cells of an 
orange are composed of two or more layers of small cells making the 
wall of a sack. 
On page 273 we read “Small tubers (tubercles) are frequently found 
on the roots of the garden bean.” If the book were revised to 1902, the 
text should contain something concerning the nature and value of these 
tubercles. 
On page 292 is a large illustration purporting to represent a section 
of a vascular bundle of a stem of corn. It is a caricature, opposite 
which Dr. Dandeno wrote: “Very bad; not correct in any particular.” 
This is too complicated for me to attempt to explain satisfactorily to 
those present. 
Figure 58, on page 309, claims to represent the under surface of a 
leaf of potato. The stomata are each represented by one oval cell open 
in the center. There should be two cells for each stoma, as every 
sophomore knows. The author adds that “the round bodies in the guard 
cells of the pores are starch grains, often present in these cells, when 
not existing in any other part of the leaf.” The fact is, the bodies he 
calls starch grains are chloroplasts or chlorophyll granules. 
On page 351 is a sentence reading as follows: “The radicle (of seed¬ 
lings) divides and subdivides in beginning the issue of true roots.” 
The radicle of a seedling was so named long ago with the supposition 
that it was a root, but later the name caulicle was applied, because it 
was found to be the first stem of a plant. Boots spring from the free 
lower end of a caulicle, but the radicle does not divide and subdivide 
in the formation of true roots. 
Agricultural College. 
