Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/256

 part of it, he says, the cuticle, consists of utricles or little sacs arranged in horizontal rows; these die in time and decay, sometimes forming a dry epidermis. On the removal of the epidermis, layer after layer of woody fibre is disclosed, and these layers, usually forming reticulations and lying one on another, follow the longitudinal direction of the stem. These fibrous bundles are composed of numerous fibres, and each single fibre of tubes which open into one another ('quaelibet fibra insignis fistulis invicem hiantibus constat') and so on. The interspaces of the network are filled with roundish tubes, which usually have a horizontal direction towards the wood. If the rind is removed the wood appears, chiefly composed of elongated fibres and tubes, and consisting of rings or vesicles open towards one another and arranged in longitudinal rows. The fibres also of the wood do not run parallel to one another, but allow a network of angular anastomosing spaces to be formed between them, the larger of which are filled with bundles of tubes, which run from the rind through these interspaces to the pith, etc., etc. Between the fibrous and fistulose bundles of the wood lie the spiral tubes ('spirales fistulae'), smaller in number but of larger size, so that in cross sections of the stem they appear with open orifices. They lie in different positions, but the majority in concentric circles. He says that in the course of ten years' examination (from 1661 therefore) he found these spiral tubes in all plants, and it may be added here that Grew in the introduction to his book expressly concedes the priority in this discovery to Malpighi; but Malpighi's ideas on the subject of these tubes are extremely indistinct, and this gave occasion to