Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/181

 Rh smooth in the distances between the Sprouts, but just under the Sprouts there are two sharp thorny prickles, broad in the letting on, as in the Bramble, one just under the Sprout, the other on the opposite side of the branch.

The distances betwixt the Sprouts are usually something more then an Inch, and many upon a Branch, according to its length, and they grew so, that if the lower Sprout be on the left side of the Branch, the next above is on the right, and so to the end, not sprouting by pairs.

At the end of each Sprout are generally four sprigs, two at the Extremity, and one on each side, just under it. At the first sprouting of these from the Branch to the Sprig where the leaves grow, they are full of little short white hairs, which wear off as the leaves grow, and then they are smooth as the Branch.

Upon each of these sprigs, are, for the most part, eleven pair of leaves, neatly set into the uppermost part of the little sprig, exactly one against another, as it were in little articulations, such as Anatomists call Enarthrosis, where the round head of a Bone is received into another fitted for its motion; and standing very fitly to shut themselves and touch, the pairs just above them closing somewhat upon them, as in the shut sprig; so is the little round Pedunculus of this leaf fitted into a little cavity of the sprig, visible to the eye in a sprig new pluck'd, or in a sprig withered on the Branch, from which the leaves easily fall by touching.

The leaf being almost an oblong square, and set into the Pedunculus, at one of the lower corners, receiveth from that not onely a Spine, as I may call it, which, passing through the leaf, divides it so length-ways that the outer-side is broader then the inner next the sprig, but little fibres passing obliquely towards the opposite broader side, seem to make it here a little muscular, and fitted to move the whole leaf, which, together with the whole sprig, are set full with little short whitish hairs.

Rh