Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/262

 in the form of a tube, and this would answer to an air-vessel in the plant. We should notice specially that Grew, better taught than the phytotomists of the 18th century, considers the vessels of the wood as air-passages, though they sometimes convey water. But he goes on with his description of the wall of the vessel; the flat surface disclosed by the unwinding of a vessel is, he says, itself composed of many parallel threads, as in an artificial ribbon, and the threads that are spirally wound answer to the warp in an artificial tissue, being held together by transverse threads, which correspond to the woof. To realise to ourselves this very strange idea of the structure of a spiral vessel as it appeared to Grew, we ought to know that he thinks that all cell-walls, even those of the parenchyma, are composed of an extremely fine web; his previous comparison of cell-tissue with foam was only intended to make the more obvious circumstances clear to the reader; his real idea is, that the substance of the walls of vessels and cells consists of an artificial web of the finest threads. He hints at this on pages 76 and 77, and on page 120 he returns once more to this conception and dwells upon it at great length. The most exact comparison, he says, which we can make of the whole body of a plant is with a piece of fine lace-tissue, such as women make upon a cushion; for the pith, the medullary rays, and the parenchyma of the rind are an extremely delicate and perfect tissue of thread. The threads of the pith run horizontally like the threads in a piece of woven stuff, and form the boundaries of the numerous vesicles of the pith and the rind, as the threads in a web bound the interstices in it. But the woody fibres and the air-vessels are perpendicular to this tissue, and therefore at right angles to the horizontal threads of the parenchyma, just as the needles in a piece of lace work that lies on the cushion are perpendicular to the threads. To complete the comparison we ought to suppose the needles to be hollow and the tissue of thread-lace in a thousand layers one above another. Grew