ves us a new figure,
which professes to represent the same order of things in a longitudinal
section; and in retracing that order sideways, instead of looking down, he
not only introduces new terms, but misses one of his old layers in doing
so,--thus:
His order, in explaining Figure 96, contains, as above, nine members of the
tree stem.
But his order, in explaining Figure 97, contains only eight, thus:
(1) The pith. (2) Medullary sheath. Circles.
(3) Medullary ray = a Radius.
(4) Vascular zone, with woody _fibres_ (not now vessels!) The fibres are
composed of spiral, annular, pitted, and other vessels.
(5) Inner bark or 'liber,' with layer of cambium cells.
(6) Second layer of bark, or 'cellular envelope,' with laticiferous
vessels.
(7) Outer or tuberous layer of bark.
(8) Epidermis.
Doing the best I can to get at the muddle-headed gentleman's meaning, it
appears, by the lettering of his Figure 97, my 25 above, that the 'liber,'
number 5, contains the cambium layer in the middle of it. The part of the
liber between the cambium and the wood is not marked in Figure 96;--but the
cambium is number 5, and the liber outside of it is number 6,--the
Endophloeum of his note.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
Having got himself into this piece of lovely confusion, he proceeds to give
a figure of the wood in the second year, which I think he has borrowed,
without acknowledgment, from Figuier, omitting a piece of Figuier's woodcut
which is unexplained in Figuier's text. I will spare my readers the work I
have had to do, in order to get the statements on either side clarified:
but I think they will find, if they care to work through the wilderness of
the two authors' wits, that this which follows is the sum of what they have
effectively to tell us; with the collated list of the main questions they
leave unanswered--and, worse, unasked.
18. An ordinary tree branch, in transverse section, consists essentially of
three parts only,--the Pith, Wood, and Bark.
The pith is in full animation during the first year--that is to say, during
the actual shooting of the wood. We are left to infer that in the second
year, the pith of the then unprogressive shoot becomes collective only, not
formative; and that the pith of the new shoot virtually energizes the new
wood in its deposition beside the old one. Thus, let _a b_, Figure 26, be a
shoot of the first year, and _b c_ of the second. The pith remains of the
same thickness
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