NN) liwiwilee OCA Nits itt iN Mt i f i i i \ Anal AND == pues ish i Ny ieee ae E722: eS AY iN Neh G TSAR Es AAD AL AES hall WH NCAR URRS yin WN, ae =e = Beis) tei merhew bance a aia ee AL 23 = e; =o Hit MWe oa rH iia Ls Me ’ te : ae eM rt Ag hs iis De inn m sige i ia ae 4 re : i: fe rhabnraeyts am bs ite beh iW oo eubeeeran peer a Si) i atch pak i ee “tt Halos Vipin ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY The natural history of plants, their for Cornell University The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www. archive.org/details/cu31924011933219 PLATE I. SWARM-SPORES AND ZYGOSPORES. FORMS OF CHLOROPHYLL- BODIES. Printed from the originals by the BIBLIOGRAPHISCHE | ~ PLATE J. a—d e—h SWARMSPORES AND ZYGOSPORES. FORMS OF CHLOROPHYLL-BODIES. Development of swarmspores in the tubular cells of Vaucheria clavata. Swarmspores and resting-cells of “red-snow” (Sphaerella nivalis), mixed with pollen-grains of Pines. Forms of Chlorophyll in cells of Desmidiex (i. Closterium Leibleinii ; k. Peniwm interrupium). Formation of zygospores and spiral arrangement of Chlorophyll-bodies in cells of Spirogyra arcta. Star-shaped Chlorophyll-bodies in cells of Zygnaema pectinatum. Glococapsa sanguinea. Protonema of Schistostega osmundacea. Transverse section of the foliage-leaf of Cress. r Transverse section of the leaf of the Passion-fiower. Relative positions of laticiferous tubes and palisade-cells in the leaf of a Spurge (Euphorbia Myrsinites). All the figures greatly magnified. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS THEIR FORMS, GROWTH, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION FROM THE GERMAN OF ANTON KERNER von MARILAUN PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA BY F. W. OLIVER, M.A., D8. QUAIN PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF MARIAN BUSK, BSc. anp MARY F. EWART, BSc. WITH ABOUT 1000 ORIGINAL WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS AND SIXTEEN PLATES IN COLOURS HALF-VOLUME IL NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1895 ® PLATE I. SWARM-SPORES AND ZYGOSPORES. Bm w bh et — Om co poe be NO oT wR wh CONTENTS OF HALF-VOLUME L LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ForMS oF CHLOROPHYLL-BODIES, PAGE Frontis. 374 » II. Insecrrvorous PLAnts: SUNDEW AND BUTTERWORT, to face 142 » I. Tropica, EprpHytes IN CEYLON, Illustrations in the Teat—Fig. 1 to Fig. 99. INTRODUCTION. The Study of Plants in Ancient and Modern Times, THE LIVING PRINCIPLE IN PLANTS. . Protoplasts considered as the Seat of Life, . Movements of Protoplasts, . Secretions and Constructive Activity of Protoplasts, . Communication of Protoplasts with one another and with the outer world, ABSORPTION OF NUTRIMENT. . Introduction, - Absorption of Inorganic Substances, . Absorption of Organic Matter from decaying Plants and Animals, . Absorption of Nutriment by Parasitic Plants, . Absorption, of Water, . Symbiosis, Changes in the Soil incident to the Nutrition of Plants, CoNDUCTION OF Foon. . Mechanics of the Movement of the raw Food-sap, . Regulation of Transpiration, . Prevention of Excessive Transpiration, ; Transpiration during various Seasons of the Year. Transpiration of Lianes, Conduction of Food-gases to the Places of Consumption, FORMATION OF ORGANIC MATTER FROM THE ABSORBED INORGANIC Foon. . Chlorophyll and Chlorophyll-granules, ~ The Green Leaves, 222 371 396 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. INTRODUCTION. THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND IN MODERN TIMES. Plants considered from the point of view of utility.—Description and classification of plants.— Doctrine of metamorphosis and speculations of nature-philosophy.—Scientific method based on the history of development.—Objects of botanical research at the present day. PLANTS CONSIDERED FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF UTILITY. SomME years ago I rambled over the mountain district of North Italy in the lovely month of May. In a small sequestered valley, the slopes of which were densely clad with mighty oaks and tall shrubs, I found the flora developed in all its beauty. There, in full bloom, was the laburnum and manna-ash, besides broom and sweet-brier, and countless smaller shrubs and grasses. From every bush came the song of the nightingale; and the whole glorious perfection of a southern spring morning filled me with delight. Speaking, as we rested, to my guide, an Italian peasant, I expressed the pleasure I experienced in this wealth of laburnum blossoms and chorus of nightingales. Imagine the rude shock to my feelings on his replying briefly that the reason why the laburnum was so luxuriant was that its foliage was poisonous, and goats did not eat it; and that though no doubt there were plenty of nightingales, there were scarcely any hares left. For him, and I daresay for thousands of others, this valley clothed with flowers was nothing more than a pasture-ground, and nightingales were merely things to be shot. This little occurrence, however, seems to me characteristic of the way in which the great majority of people look upon the world of plants and animals. To their minds animals are game, trees are timber and fire-wood, herbs are vegetables (in the limited sense), or perhaps medicine or provender for domestic animals, whilst flowers are pretty for decoration. Turn in what direction I would, in every country where I have travelled for botanical purposes, the questions asked by the inhabitants were always the same. Everywhere I had to explain whether the plants I sought and gathered were poisonous or not; whether they were efficacious as cures for this or that illness; and by what signs the medicinal or otherwise Vou. I. ; 2 THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. useful plants were to be recognized and distinguished from the rest. And the attitude of the great mass of country folk in times past was the same as at the present day. All along anxiety for a livelihood, the need of the individual to satisfy his own hunger, the interests of the family, the provision of food for domestic animals, have been the factors that have first led men to classify plants into the nutritious and the poisonous, into those that are pleasant to the taste and those that are unpleasant, and have induced them to make attempts at cultivation, and to observe the various phenomena of plant-life. No less powerful as an incentive to the study of herbs, roots, and seeds, and to the minute comparison of similar forms and the determination of their differences, was the hope and belief that the higher powers had endowed particular plants with healing properties. In ancient Greece there was a special guild, the “ Rhizotomoi,” whose members collected and prepared such roots and herbs as were considered to be curative, and either sold them themselves or caused them to be sold by apothecaries. Through the labours of these Rhizotomoi, added to those of Greek, Roman, and Arabic physicians, and of gardeners, vine-growers, and farmers, a mass of information concerning the plant-world was acquired, which for a long period stood as botanical science. As late as the sixteenth century plants were looked upon from a purely utilitarian point of view, not only by the masses but also by very many professed scholars; and in most of the books of that time we find the medicinal properties, and the general utility of the plants selected for descrip- tion and discrimination, occupying a conspicuous position and treated in an exhaustive manner. Just as men lived in the firm belief that human destinies depended upon the stars, so they clung to the notion that everything upon the earth was created for the sake of mankind; and, in particular, that in every plant there were forces lying dormant which, if liberated, would conduce either to the welfare or to the injury of man. Points which might serve as bases for the discovery of these secrets of nature were eagerly sought for. People imagined they discerned magic in many plants, and even believed that they were able to trace in the resemblance of certain leaves, flowers, and fruits to parts of the human body, an indication, emanating from supernatural powers, of the manner in which the organ in question was intended to affect the human constitution. The similarity in shape between a particular foliage-leaf and the liver did duty for a sign that the leaf was capable of successful application in cases of hepatic disease, and the fact of a blossom being heart-shaped must mean that it would cure cardiac com- plaints. Thus arose the so-called doctrine of Signatures, which, brought to its highest development by the Swiss alchemist Bombastus Paracelsus (1493-1541), played a great part in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and still survives at the present day in the mania for nostrums. The inclination of the masses is now, as it was centuries ago, in favour of supernatural and mysterious rather than simple and natural interpretations; and a Bombastus Paracelsus would still find no lack of credulous followers. In truth, the great bulk of mankind regard Botany as subservient to medicine and agriculture, they look at it from the purely THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 3 utilitarian point of view in a manner not essentially different from that of two hundred—or even two thousand—years ago, and it may well be a long time before they rise above this idea. In addition to the botanical knowledge thus initiated by the necessities of life, a second avenue leading to the same goal was early established by man’s sense of beauty. The first effect of this was limited to the employment of wild flowers and foliage for purposes of ornament and decoration. Later on, it led to the cultivation of the more showy plants in gardens, and ultimately to the arts of gardening and horticulture, which at different periods and in different countries have passed through such various phases, corresponding to the standards of the beautiful which have prevailed. THE DESCRIPTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS. A third path leading to botanical knowledge springs from the impulse which actuates those who are endowed with a keen perception of form to investigate structural differences down to their most minute characteristics. Workers in this field arrange and classify all distinct forms according to their external resemblances, give them names appropriate to their position and importance, catalogue them, and keep up the register when once it has been started. Many people possess, in addi- tion, the remarkable taste for collecting, which causes them to find pleasure in merely accumulating and possessing enormous numbers of specimens of the particu- lar objects on which their fancy is fixed. This tendency of the human mind has played a very important part in the history of botany. The first traces of it can be ascribed with certainty to a period long before the commencement of our era; for such descriptions and other notes as are contained in the Natural History of Plants, written by Theophrastus about the year 300 B.c., are founded, for the most part, on the observations and experiments of “Rhizotomoi,” physicians and agriculturists, and it is obvious from the text of the book that in some cases those authorities did seek out plants, and learn to distinguish them for their own sakes, and not solely for their economic or medicinal value. At the time of the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages, it is true, no one troubled himself about plants other than those known to be in some way useful. But there was a revival of the practice of hunting for plants for the purpose of describing and enumerating all distinguishable forms, at that great epoch when the nations of the West began to study the treasures of Greek thought, endeavouring to adopt the point of view of antiquity, and to harmonize their own circumstances with it. It was at this same period that art too shook itself free from the tradi- tions of the Middle Ages, and became actuated by a new ideal based on the study of the antique; but science, particularly natural science, has as good a claim as art to regard that memorable time as its period of renaissance. Although the ancient Greek writings on natural history, to which people turned with such youthful enthusiasm in the fifteenth century, could not satisfy their thirst for 4 THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. knowledge, yet there is no doubt that, as in art, the effect was to stimulate and reform; and that this study led up to the source, so long forgotten, whence the ancients had themselves drawn their knowledge, that is, to the direct investigation of nature, which has invariably given to every branch of human knowledge new and pregnant life. As regards botanical knowledge in particular, the study of old Greek writings on the part of western nations in both Northern and Southern Europe had the immediate effect of instituting an eager search for all the different kinds of indigenous plants; and, besides arousing a passion for investigation, it evoked un- tiring industry in this pursuit, the results of which preserved in a number of bulky herbals still excite our wonder and respect. If these folios, dating for the most part from the first half of the sixteenth century, are perused in the hope of their reveal- ing some guiding principle as a basis for the arrangement of the subject, the reader will no doubt be obliged to lay them aside unsatisfied. The plants were described and discussed just as the authors happened to come across them; and it is only here and there that we find a feeble attempt to range together and make groups of nearly-allied species. Only cursory attention was paid to the facts of geographical distribution. Plants native to the soil, herbs which flowered in gardens and had been reared from seed purchased from itinerant vendors of antidotes, and plants whose fruits were brought to Europe as curiosities from the New World recently discovered—all these were jumbled together in a confused medley. The whole endeavour of the time was directed to the enumeration and description of all such things as possess the power of producing green foliage and maturing fruit under the sun’s quickening rays. Owing to the fact that researches were then limited to the native soil of the student, most of the botanical authors of that day had but dark inklings of the extent to which the floras of various latitudes and areas differ. They assumed that plants of the Mediterranean shores, which had been described centuries before by Theophrastus or Dioscorides or Pliny, were necessarily the same as those of their own more inclement countries. The German “Fathers of Botany” (Brunfels, born about 1495, died 1534; Bock, 1498-1554; Fuchs, 1501-1566, are the best known) applied the old Greek and Latin names without scruple to the species growing in their own localities. They were so firmly convinced of the identity of the German, Greek, and Italian floras that even the numerous inconsistencies occurring in the descriptions did not disconcert them, or prevent them from discussing at great length whether a particular name was intended by Theophrastus and Dioscorides to indicate this or that plant. It was by slow degrees that botanists first began to abandon these fruitless debates concerning the Greek and Latin names of plants, with which it had been the custom to fill so many pages of the herbals. Step by step they became conscious that although the yellow pages of the ancient books deserved all gratitude for the stimulating influence they had exercised, yet the green book of nature should be set above them. This led to their devoting themselves entirely to direct researches in the subject of their native floras. The THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 5 herbal of Hieronymus Bock, which appeared in 1546, and in which “the herbs growing in German countries are described from long and sure experience,” contains a passage treating of the controversy of the day as to whether the Latin name Erica was applicable to the German Heath or not; and in the midst of the discus- sion the author expresses the opinion that “the plants we know best were the least known to the Latins;” and at last he exclaims: “Be our heath the same as Erica or not, it is in any case a pretty and sturdy little shrub, beset with numerous brown rounded branches, which are clothed all over with small green leaves; and its appearance is like that of the sweet-smelling Lavender Cotton.” And again in a number of other places, after making lengthy philological statements relating to the old names, he ends by losing patience and declaring that the proper thing would be to lay aside all disputes concerning this nomenclature. At length a Belgian, Charles de l’Ecluse (1526-1609), whose name was latinized into Clusius, emancipated himself entirely from the hair-splitting verbal contro- versies of the day. He was also the first to abandon the utilitarian standpoint; and in his extensive work, which appeared at the end of the sixteenth century, he was guided solely by the desire to become acquainted with every flowering thing. He therefore endeavoured to distinguish, describe, and where possible to draw the various forms of plants, to cultivate them, and to preserve them in a dried condition. It was just at that time that collections of dried plants began to be made. Such a collection was at first called a “hortus siccus,” and later on a “herbarium.” All museums of natural history were forthwith furnished with them. Moreover, Clusius, actuated by the wish to see with his own eyes what the vegetation on the other side of the mountains looked like, was the first man to travel for the purpose of botanizing. In order to extend his knowledge of plants he roamed over Europe from the sierras of Spain to the borders of Hungary, and from the sea-coast to the highlands of the Tyrol. Journeys of this kind in pursuit of botanical know- ledge were by degrees extended to wider and wider limits, and thus an abundance of material was brought together from all latitudes and from every quarter of the globe. An immense number of isolated observations were accumulated in this way, till, at length, in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the desirability of sifting and arranging this chaotic mass became urgent. When, therefore, the Swedish naturalist Linnzus (1707-1778), by the exercise of unparalleled industry, mastered in a fabulously short space of time the detailed results of centuries of labour, and afforded a general survey of all this scattered material, he obtained universal recognition. Linneus introduced short names for the various species in place of the cumbrous older designations, and showed how to distinguish the species by means of concise descriptions. For this purpose he marked out the different parts of a plant as root, stem, leaf, bract, calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil, fruit, and seeds. Again, he distinguished particular forms of those organs, as, for instance, scapes, haulms, and peduncles as forms of stems, and in addition also the parts of each organ, such as filaments, anthers, and pollen in the stamens, and ovary, style, and stigma in the pistil; and to each one of these objects he assigned a technical name 6 THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. (terminus). With the help of the botanical terminology thus formulated it became possible not only to abridge the specific descriptions, but also to recognize species from such descriptions, and to determine what name had been given them by botanists, and to what group they belonged. Linnzus selected as a basis of classification in the “System” established by him the characteristics of the various parts of the flower. In this system the number, relative length, cohesion, and disposition of the stamens formed the ground of division into “Classes.” Within each Class, “Orders” were then differentiated according to the nature of the pistil, especially the number of styles; and each Order was again subdivided into more narrowly defined groups, which received the name of “Genera.” To the 23 classes of Flowering Plants (Phanerogamia) Linnwas added as a 24th Class Flowerless Plants (Cryptogamia), which were divided into several groups (Ferns, Mosses, Alge, and Fungi) in respect of their general appearance and mode of occurrence. This system took immediate possession of the civilized world. Englishmen, Germans, and Italians now worked in unison as faithful disciples of Linneus. Even laymen studied the Linnzan botany with enthusiasm; and it was recommended, especially to ladies, as a harmless pastime, not overtaxing to the mind. In France Rousseau delivered lectures on botany to a circle of educated ladies; whilst even Goethe experienced a strong attraction to the “loveliest of the sciences,” as botany was called in that day. Linneus had introduced for the first time the name “flora” to signify a catalogue of the plants of a more or less circumscribed district. He had himself written a flora of Lapland and Sweden, and by doing so had stimulated others to undertake the compilation of similar catalogues; so that by the end of the 18th century floras of England, Piedmont, Carniola, Austria, &c., had been produced. By this means a certain perfection was attained in that field of botany which has only in view the examination of the fully-developed external forms of plants, together with the distinguishing, describing, naming, and grouping them, and the enumeration of species indigenous to particular regions. Later on, unfortunately, botanists lost themselves in a maze of dull systematizing. They either contented themselves with collecting, preparing, and arranging herbaria, or else devoted their energies to endless debates over such questions, for instance, as whether a plant, that some author had distinguished from others and described, deserved to rank as a species, or should’ be reckoned as a variety dependent on its habitat or on local conditions of temperature, light, and moisture. They took delight in now including a group of forms as varieties of a single species, now dividing some species as described by a particular author into several other species. For this purpose they did not rely upon the only sure method, the determination by cultural experiment of the fact of the constancy or variability of the form in question; nor did they, in general, adhere to any consistent principle to guide them in this amusement. Aberrations of this kind constituted, however, no serious barrier to progress, On the contrary, the passion for collecting continued to extend its range. The THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 7 vegetation of the remotest corners of the earth was ransacked by travelling botanists without any material advantage being gained, though they not infre- quently ran considerable risk to their health, and sometimes sacrificed their lives. As one generation succeeded another thousands of students of the “scientia ama- bilis” made their appearance in every country. Swept along by the prevailing current of thought they devoted themselves to the examination of native and foreign floras, or to a detailed study of the most insignificant sections of the vegetable kingdom. Those who are not under the spell of this passion cannot conceive the joy experienced by the discoverer of a hitherto unknown moss. To such it is inexplicable how anyone can devote the labour of half a lifetime to a classification of Algz or Lichens, or to a monograph of the bramble-tribe or orchids. The pro- gress achieved eventually in this department of botany is best appreciated when the wide difference in the numbers of species described in botanical works of different periods is considered. Theophrastus in his Natural History of Plants (about 300 B.c.) mentions about 500 species, and Pliny (78 a.D.) rather more than 1000; whereas, by the time of Linnzus, about 10,000 were known; and now the number must be all but 200,000. It should be remarked, however, that half the plants described since Linnzous lived fall into the category of Cryptogams, or non- flowering plants, the examination of which was first rendered possible by the wide- spread use of the microscope in recent times. The microscope led also to discoveries concerning the internal architecture of plants. A faint attempt in this direction, made 200 years ago, had died away without leaving any trace behind; but at the commencement of this century the “inward construction of plants” was studied all the more eagerly by means of the microscope. In buildings belonging to different styles of architecture it is not only the forms of the wings, stories, rooms, and gables that differ, but also and in no less degree those of the columns, pilasters, and decorations. The same is the case with plants. They possess chambers at different levels, vaults, and passages. They have pipes running through them, and beams and buttresses, some massive and some slender, to support them. The pieces of which they are built vary in size, and their walls are sculptured in all kinds of ways. It was the business of the vegetable anatomist to dissect plants, to look into all these structures under the microscope, to describe the various component parts as well as the ground-plan and elevation of the plant-edifice as a whole; and to name the different forms of struc- ture after the manner of Linnzus when he invented terms for the different forms of stems and leaves, and for the several parts of the flower and fruit. DOCTRINE OF METAMORPHOSIS AND SPECULATIONS OF NATURE-PHILOSOPHY. Side by side with this immense volume of research, which was directed to the separation, description, and synoptical arrangement of mature forms only, there arose about the year 1600 another school which considered vegetable forms from 8 THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. the point of view of their life-history, and endeavoured to trace them back to their origin. Tracing the development, from one stage to another, of all the different species, of the multitudinous forms of leaves and flowers, and of the various kinds of cells and tissues, the student of this school has to detect identity in multiplicity, to show that the connection between forms which have arisen from one another is in accordance with fixed laws, and to express those laws in definite formule. The attention of botanists was in the first place directed to the wonderful series of changes in the form of the leaf which occur in all phanerogamic (.e. flowering) plants as the delicate seedling gradually turns into a flowering shoot. At the circum- ference of the stem which constitutes the axis of the plant, foliar structures are produced at successive intervals. All these structures are essentially the same; but they exhibit a continuous modification of their shape, arrangement, size, and colour, according to their relative altitudes upon the stem. To discover the causes of this structural variation was an attractive problem, and very diverse theories were suggested for its solution. The earliest explanation, which was given by the Italian botanist Cesalpino in 1583, is founded rather on superficial analogies and remote resemblances existing between tissues than on careful observation. According to this theory the stem is composed of a central medulla highly endowed with vitality, and surrounded by concentric layers of tissue, those namely of the wood, the bast, and the cortex. Each of the foliar structures put forth from the axis is supposed to originate in one of the above-named tissues, the idea being that the green foliage- leaf and calyx grew out from the cortical layer, the corolla from the bast, the stamens from the wood, and the carpels from the medulla. It was believed, also, that the outer envelope of a fruit arose from the rind of the fruit-stalk, the seed- coats from the wood, and the central part of the seed from the medulla. Early in the eighteenth century there came to be connected with this theory the doctrine of so-called “ prolepsis,” which was founded on more accurate comparative observations. It was thought that the medulla of the stem breaks through the rind at particular spots to form at each a bud, which subsequently grows out into a side branch. Owing to this lateral pressure of the medulla the ascending nutrient sap becomes arrested beneath the rudimentary bud, and, in consequence, the cortex develops under the bud into a foliage-leaf. In the bud the different parts of the future annual shoot are already shadowed forth in stages one above the other; and each is produced always by the one beneath it. As soon as vegetative activity is resumed after the expiration of the winter rest, the bud sprouts. If only that part of it develops which constitutes the first year’s rudiment, a shoot furnished with foliage-leaves is produced. But the embryonic structures belonging to succeeding years, which are concealed in the bud, may also be stimulated to development; and when this happens, these premature products do not appear as foliage-leaves, but in more or less altered forms as bracts, sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels. If no such anticipatory activity has been excited, the rudiment which in the previous case would have developed into a bract does not appear till the following year, and then as a foliage-leaf; whilst that which would have formed a calyx in the first THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 9 year lies dormant till the third year, when it too emerges simply as a leaf. This transformation of the leaves, or metamorphosis as Linneus called it, is, therefore, the result of anticipation; and it was assumed by the Linnean school that the cause of this metamorphosis or hastened development was a local decrease in the quantity of nutriment. The idea was, that in consequence of the limited supply of sap the incipient leaves were not able to attain to the size of foliage-leaves, but remained / Se if) | nel? e . - : IVers Fig. 1.—Seedlings with Cotyledons and Foliage-leaves. rn 1Cytisus Laburnum. 2 Koelreuteria paniculata. % Acer platanoides. rudimentary, as is the case with many bracts; and further, that the axis was no longer capable of elongating, so that the leaves proceeding from it remained close together, became coherent, and thus formed the calyx. The supporters of this explanation relied particularly on the experience of gardeners, that a plant in good soil with a liberal supply of nutriment is apt to produce leafy shoots rather than flowers; whereas, if the same plant is transferred to a poorer soil, where its food is limited, it develops flowers in abundance. But yet a third attempt was made to explain this process of transformation, by the theory that parts which are identical so far as their origin is concerned, subse- quently receive the stamp of distinct foliar organs. The diversity in the develop- ment of parts, originally alike, was supposed to depend on a filtration of the nutrient 10 THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. sap, the idea being that identical primordial leaves issuing from the axis of a ak cular plant were fashioned with more and more delicacy as the sap became clarified and refined in its passage through the vessels. This explanation of metamorphosis was first given by Goethe (1790) in a treatise which was much discussed, and which exercised a most important influence in initiating researches of a similar nature. Goethe’s interpretation of metamorphosis may be briefly reproduced as follows. A plant is built up gradually from a fundamental organ—the leaf—which issues from the node of astem. First of all, the organs which are called seed-leaves or cotyledons (tig. 1) develop on the young plant as it germinates from the seed; they proceed from the lowest node of the stem, and are frequently subterranean. They are of comparatively small size, are simple and unsegmented, have no trace of indentation, and appear for the most part as thick, whitish lobes, which are, according to Goethe’s expression, closely and uniformly packed with a raw material, and are only coarsely organized. Goethe explains these leaves as being of the lowest grade in the evolu- tionary scale. After them and above them the foliage leaves develop at the suc- ceeding nodes of the stem; they are more expanded both in length and breadth; their margins are often notched, and their surfaces divided into lobes, or even com- posed of secondary leaflets; and they are coloured green. “They have attained to a higher degree of development and refinement, for which they are indebted to the light and air.” Still further up, there next appears the third stage in foliar evolu- tion. The structure called by Linnzus the calyx is again to be traced back to the leaf. It is a collection of individual organs of the same fundamental type, but modified in a characteristic manner. The close-set leaves, which proceed from nodes of the stem at what is, in a certain sense, the third story of the plant-edifice as a whole, and which constitute the calyx, are contracted, and have but little variety as compared with the outspread foliage-leaves, On the fourth rung of the ladder by which the leaf ascends in its effort to perfect itself, appears the structure named in the Linnean terminology the corolla. It consists, like the calyx, only of several leaves grouped round a centre. If a con- traction has taken place in the case of the calyx, we have now once more an expan- sion. The leaves which compose the corolla are usually larger than those of the calyx. They are, besides, more delicate and tender, and are brightly coloured; and Goethe, whose mode of expression is here preserved as far as possible, supposes them to be filled also with purer and more subtle juices. He conceives that these juices are in some manner filtered in the lower leaves and in the vessels of the lower region of the stem, and so reach the upper stories in a more perfect condition. A more refined sap must then, he says, give rise to a softer and more delicate tissue (fig. 2). Above the corolla and at the fifth stage of development there follows the group of stamens, structures which, though not answering to the ordinary conception of leaves, are yet to be regarded again simply as such. In the circle of the corolla the leaves were expanded, and conspicuous owing to their colour; on the other hand, in the stamens they are contracted to an extreme degree, being almost fila- mentous in part. These leaves appear to have reached a high degree of perfection, THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 11 and in the parts of the stamens termed anthers “ pollen-grains” are developed “in which an extremely pure sap is stored.” Adjoining these pollen-producing leaves, Fig. 2.—_Metamorphoses of Leaves as exhibited by the Poppy. 1Germinating plant with cotyledons. 2 and 8 The same plant further developed and with foliage-leaves; in ® the cotyledons and lowest foliage-leaves are already withered. ‘The same plant with a flower-bud showing the closed sepals. 5 The bud open and with petals, stamens, and carpels (pistil) developed. where contraction has reached its extreme limit, is the sixth and last story, which is composed of leaves, once more less closely-set, and exhibiting a final expansion on the part of the plant. These are the carpels, which surround the highest part 12 THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. of the stem and inclose the seeds, the latter being developed from the tip of the stem. Thus the plant accomplishes its life-history in six stages. It is built up of leaves, the “intrinsic identity” of which cannot be doubted, although they assume extremely various shapes corresponding to the six strides towards perfection. In this process of transformation or metamorphosis of the leaf there are three alter- nate contractions and expansions, whilst each stage is more perfect than the one next below it. Whilst seeking to explain metamorphosis in this manner, and endeavouring, with greater per- spicacity than all his predecessors and contem- poraries, “to reduce to one simple universal prin- ciple all the multifarious phenomena of the glorious garden of the world,” Goethe conceived the notion of a typical plant, an ideal, the realization of which is achieved in nature by means of a mani- fold variation of individual parts. This abstract notion of a plant’s development with its six stages corresponding to “three wave-crests” or expan- sions (Leaf, Petal, Carpel) and “three wave- troughs” or contractions (Cotyledon, Sepal, Sta- men) is expressed graphically in figure 3. It still holds its ground at the present day under the name of Goethe’s “ Urpflanze,” and the credit of its invention is entirely his. But it is not quite right to claim for Goethe, in addition, the title of
3 0' 57 ry ores at oO % a Re, of Se Pex Fig. 53.—1 Cauline hairs of Stellaria media; x110. 2 Lowest cells of the same hairs; x200. 8 Capitate hairs of Centaurea Balsamita; x150. 4Capitate hairs of Pelargonium lividum; x 150. cell-membranes are readily permeable by water, which is attracted with great energy by the cell-contents. The cell-membrane is often very thick, it is true, but as soon as water comes into contact with it the outer layer is discarded, the inner layers swell up and the water passes through these swollen layers into the interior of the cell. This happens, for instance, in many pelargoniums and geraniums, wherein the capitate cells go through a process of excoriation on every occasion of the imbibition of water (see fig. 53+). In other plants the walls of the capitate cells-are everywhere thin, and not only do the cell-contents consist of a viscid gum- like mass, but the external surface of the wall is also covered by a layer of viscid excretion. In many cases the viscid matter excreted by the glands spreads over the entire surface of the leaf, so that the latter feels sticky and looks as if it were 230 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. coated with varnish. Many plants which have their roots buried m crevices of rock and no small number of herbaceous steppe-plants are quite thickly covered with glandular hairs of the kind. Centawrea Balsamita (see fig. 53°), a plant occurring on the elevated steppes of Persia, may be selected as an example of the latter group. The advantage of the structure of capitate hairs is not far to seek. In dry weather the thick cuticle (Pelargonium) or the varnish coating (Centawrea Balsamita), as the case may be, prevents desiccation of the cells and groups of cells in question. But as soon as rain or dew falls, the cuticle and the coat of varnish take up water, and it is by their instrumentality that water reaches the interior of the cells. Thus, whilst the exhalation of water is hindered, its absorption is not. Other epidermal cells of foliage-leaves besides trichomes are capable of acting as absorption-cells, although this action, for reasons already given, is very restricted, and is only had recourse to when the turgidity of the cells of the foliage-leaves has diminished, and the water exhaled by those cells is not being restored by the ordinary apparatus of conduction from the roots. If branches are cut from plants which bear no glandular or other form of hair on their leaves or stems—as, for instance, the leafy stem of Thesium alpinwm—and the cut ends are closed with sealing-wax, and the branches left to wither, and, when quite withered, are immersed in water, they freshen up speedily and the leaves become tense again, the cells having recovered their turgidity. Here, then, decidedly absorption has taken place through the ordinary cuticularized epidermal cells. Certainly these epidermal cells in Thesiwm are not protected against wetting. Wherever the epidermal cells are not susceptible of being wetted owing to a coating of wax or any other contrivance there could naturally be no question of water being absorbed. This very circumstance, however, leads to the supposition that an important part in water absorption is to be attributed to the alternation of wettable and non-wettable parts on one and the same leaf. In the case of many foliage-leaves one can see that only those cells of the epidermis which lie above the veins of the leaf retain the water which comes upon them, that is to say, are wetted by it, whilst the water rolls off the intervening areas of the lamina. Indeed, there are in many instances contrivances obviously designed for the purpose of conducting water from parts of the epidermis not liable to be wetted to parts that can be moistened. DEVELOPMENT OF ABSORPTION-CELLS IN SPECIAL CAVITIES AND GROOVES IN THE LEAVES. The contrivances last described are all only adapted to rather a casual appropri- ation of water from the atmosphere. But besides these we find a number of other contrivances, which render it possible for every rolling dewdrop and every passing shower to be made of use to the utmost extent. These contrivances consist of a variety of depressions and excavations, in which rain and dew are collected and protected against rapid evaporation. Some species have deep hollows or channels, others little pits, whilst others again have basins, vesicular or bowl- ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. 231 shaped structures, to collect and absorb the water; and the construction of the protective apparatus, which prevents too rapid evaporation into the air of water that has once flowed into the depressions, is as various as the form of the depressions themselves. A short account of the most striking of these structures will now be given. Such water-collecting grooves as are closed, so as to form ducts, occur principally in petioles and in the rachises of compound leaves. For instance, in the Ash the leaf rachis, from which the leaflets arise, is furnished with a groove on its upper surface. Owing to the fact that the edges of this groove, which are strengthened by a so-called collenchymatous tissue, are bent up and curved over the groove, a duct or conduit pipe is produced, and this duct only gapes open at the places where the leaflets are inserted upon the rachis, and where, therefore, the drops of rain to which the leaflets are exposed flow off into the groove (see fig. 541). The simple hairs and peltate groups of cells developed in the grooves and duets (fig. 54? and 54°) are not merely transiently moistened, but inasmuch as the water is retained there for several days after a fall of rain, they are during that time immersed in a regular bath of water, and are able to absorb the moisture very gradually. In many Gentianeze—most conspicuously in the large-flowered Dwarf Gentian (Gentiana acaulis)—the decussate pairs of radical leaves form a loose rosette (see fig. 52'). The larger dark-green blade of each leaf is flat and even, and only the pale-coloured base is fashioned into a groove. This groove is made deeper by the tissue of the leaf being puffed up round it, and as all the leaves of the rosette arise close together, the groove of each leaf is covered by the lamina above it. The rain or dew accumulated from the blade remains standing in this concealed nook for some time without evaporating, so that absorptive apparatus with the power of taking up water has plenty of time for the purpose. In this case the absorptive apparatus is in the hindmost extremity of the groove, and consists of long, club-shaped structures composed of extremely thin-walled cells (see fig. 54*), and these act so energetically that if leaves are cut off and left to fade, and if the cut surfaces are stopped with sealing-wax, and the whole then bathed with rain- water, they take up in twenty-four hours about 40 per cent of their weight of water. A similar phenomenon occurs in the case of a number of Bromeliacez which adhere by a few roots to the bark of trees in the tropics, and have grooved rosetted leaves, the latter covering one another, and being arranged in such a manner as to form a regular system of cisterns. At the bottom of each cistern there are special groups of thin-walled cells which suck up any water that flows in when rain falls. On the under surface of the leaves of the Cow-berry (Vaccinium Vitis-Idcea) little depressions are formed, and in the middle of each depression there is a club- shaped structure composed of small thin-walled cells, which contain slimy, viscid substances and act as absorbent organs. The rain which falls upon the upper surface of the leaf gets drawn over the edges on to the under surface, fills the small depressions occurring there, and is taken up by the absorptive apparatus. A 232 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. similar contrivance is also exhibited by the leaves of alpine roses and those of the American Bacharis. For instance, on the under surface of the leaves of the Alpine Rose (Rhododendron hirsutum) there is a large number of discoid glands (fig. 54°), each of which is supported on a short stalk and sunk in a little hollow (fig. 54°) The cells composing the gland are arranged radially, and contain slimy, resinous matters capable of swelling up. These contents are also excreted, and then cover the entire glandular disc, aud often even the whole surface of the leaf in the form Fig. 54.—Absorption of Water by Foliage-leaves. ‘Grooved rachis:of the ash-leaf. 2Section through the same; x30. 8 Peltate group of cells from the groove. 4Section through the base of a leaf of the Dwarf Gentian; x20. 5Under side of a leaf of Rhododendron hirsutum; x30. Section through a leaf of Rhododendron hirsutum, of a light-brown crumbly crust. When drops of rain fall upon Alpine Rose leaves, the whole of the upper surfaces, in each case, is in the first place anoistened; but without delay, and partly through the action of the hairs fringing the margin, the water soaks on to the under side of the leaf. ‘As soon as it reaches the glands it is taken up by the crumbly incrustation mentioned above, which swells up in con- sequence. The little cavities in which the glands are situated also fill with water, and each gland is then immersed, as it were, in a bath, and able to absorb as much (moisture as is required. Owing to the glands being invariably developed above the vascular bundles of the leaf (see fig. 54°), the water that is absorbed can be conducted without delay by them to the places where it is required. As soon as the leaves of alpine roses become dry again, the mass of resinous mucilage again ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. 233 forms a dry crust over the glands and protects their tender-walled cells from too great evaporation. Very remarkable also are the structures adapted to absorption on the leaves of saxifrages belonging to the group Aizoon, and on those of a large proportion of the Plumbaginew. The saxifrages in question have little depressions visible to the naked eye upon the upper surface of the leaves behind the apex, and along the margins. When the margin is dentate or crenate, as, for instance, in Saxifraga ENLOnCat ( Sin ae . SCOO) TOs ENN SES aR ‘ ae \ Ee NS Fig. 55.—Absorptive Cavities and Cups on Foliage-leaves. Leaf from a shoot of the Aspen. 2The base of this leaf; x3. %Section through an absorption-cup; x25. 4 Leaf of Acantholimon Senganense. 5 Section through part of this leaf; x110. 6 Leaf of the Evergreen Saxifrage (Sazifraga Aizoon). 7 Two teeth from the margin of this leaf. The absorptive cavity in the upper tooth incrusted with lime; the lower one with the incrustation removed. ®Section through a tooth from the leaf and its absorptive cavity; x110. Aizoon (see fig. 55°), one of these cavities occurs in the middle of each tooth. The cells forming the outer edge of the tooth or scallop are always much thickened, firm, and rigid; but the median portion of the leaf as a whole is fleshy, and composed of a bulky large-celled parenchyma. The vascular bundle, after entering the leaf at its base, divides into a number of lateral bundles which either run towards the margin without further ramification (as in Sawiccesia), or else form a net-work by uniting one with another in their course (as in Saaifraga Aizoon). These lateral bundles terminate in the marginal teeth of the leaf and immediately beneath the little cavities which occur there, whilst the extremity of each bundle swells into a knob or pear-shaped enlargement strongly resembling the roundish groups of spirally-thickened cells in the tentacles of the Sun-dew 234 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. (cf. fig. 261). The bottom of each depression is made up of cells with very thin external walls, and the function of these cells is to suck up the water that flows into the cavity. It is obvious that the absorbed water passes thence into the enlarged extremities of the branches of the vascular bundles, and may then be conducted to other parts of the leaf. Seeing that all these saxifrages have their habitat in crevices of rocks on sunny declivities, they are much exposed to desiccation in times of drought. The epidermal cells of the medial area and those of the extreme edge are no doubt protected by a very thick cuticle (see fig. 55°); but in the case of the thin-walled cells at the bottom of the depression there is the danger of as much or even more water escaping through them, in the form of vapour, than has been previously taken in during the prevalence of rain. In order to prevent this loss of moisture recourse is had to a very remarkable contrivance for closing the cavity, viz. an incrustation of carbonate of lime. In many saxifrages this crust covers the whole face of the leaf, in others only the margin, or the spot where the depression occurs. In the latter case it looks like a lid over the cavity. At that spot the crust is always thickened, and sometimes it forms a regular stopper which fills up the entire cavity. It rests upon the epidermis of the leaf, but is not adnate thereto, and may be removed with a needle. When a leaf is bent the crust is ruptured and breaks up into irregular plates and scales, and a strong gust of wind would then easily strip off the fragments and blow them away. In species subject to this danger, as, for instance, Saaifraga Aizoon, in which the rosetted leaves curl strongly upwards and inwards in dry weather, the crust of lime is held fast by peculiar plugs which arise from individual epidermal cells projecting above the rest in the form of papille (see fig. 55°). These plugs are found principally on the side walls of the cavities, but are also scattered every- where on the epidermis of the margin of the leaf. They are so incrusted with the lime that the latter cannot easily fall off, and a comparatively strong pressure must be applied with the needle to detach it from the substratum. The calcium carbonate of which these crusts consist is excreted in solution by the plant from pores occur- ring at the bottom of the depressions. The pores are constructed like ordinary stomata, but are, as a rule, somewhat bigger, and it is not improbable that, when once the lime crust has formed from the excreted solution, they take part in the function of transpiration. There is scarcely any need for further explanation of the manner in which the apparatus here described acts. When rain or dew falls on a saxifrage leaf the whole upper surface is moistened directly, whilst the water soaks under the crust of lime, and, diffusing itself there, fills in a moment the depressions, and is taken up by the absorption-cells situated at the bottom of the latter. The calcareous stopper imbedded in each cavity is only upheaved by this process to a trifling extent. In dry weather the crust is appressed closely to the epidermal cells, and the stopper descends again and impedes the evaporation of water from the thin- walled cells within the cavities. The absorptive organs on the leaves of Acantholimon, Goniolimon, and a few ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. 235 other Plumbaginez, resemble in an extraordinary degree those pertaining to saxi- frages. The depressions are here found uniformly distributed over the entire sur- face of a leaf, and when they are closed by a crust or scale composed of calcium carbonate, the leaves are dotted with white spots, ag may be seen in the drawing of a leaf of Acantholimon Senganense given in fig. 554. Upon the caleareous scale being removed, a little cavity is revealed beneath, and one observes that the floor of this cavity is composed of from four to eight cells, separated by radial partition- walls, and with exceedingly thin and delicate outer walls. The other epidermal cells adjoining the cavity are, on the contrary, always furnished with a thick cuticle (see fig. 55°). Whenever water is being copiously supplied to the roots, and the turgidity of the cells in the leaves is great, the cells forming the floor of the cavity excrete bicarbonate of lime in solution. Part of the carbonic acid escapes into the air, and the insoluble mono-carbonate of lime in the water then forms a crust, which fills and covers the cavity, and often even spreads over the whole leaf, constituting a coherent calcareous coat. All Plumbaginesws which exhibit this contrivance—that is to say, the various species of Acantholumon, Goniolimon, and Statice—inhabit steppes and deserts, where in summer no rain falls for months together, and the soil becomes dry to a con- siderable depth, so that extremely little water is available for the roots. Although the rigid leaves are protected by a thick cuticle, and by crusts and scales of lime against excessive evaporation of their aqueous contents, still it is difficult to avoid some slight loss of water, especially when the noon-day sun beats down upon the steppe, and, owing to the extremely arid nature of the soil, it is scarcely possible to replace: this loss, however small it may be, by absorption from the earth on the part of the suction-cells on the roots. All the more welcome to plants of the kind is the dew which sometimes falls copiously on steppes and in deserts in the course of the night; it wets the rigid leaves, and, soaking immediately underneath the crusts and scales of lime to the thin-walled cells at the bottom of the cavities, is absorbed with avidity by them. When drought returns with the day, the scales of lime close tightly down like lids on the epidermis beneath, and, so far as possible, prevent evaporation. In particular, they impede the exhalation of water from the thin- walled cells at the bottom of the cavities—a loss which would otherwise be quite inevitable, and would be followed by a rapid desiccation of the entire plant. To prevent the calcareous lids from dropping off, there are either, as in Saaifraga Aizoon, papilliform or conical projections from cells in the immediate vicinity of the cavities, which projections often have hooked ends and confine the crust of lime, or else each cavity is somewhat contracted at the top and enlarged below, so that the lime stopper, being shaped according to the contour of the cavity, cannot fall out. A significance similar to that attributed to calcium carbonate excretions belongs also to the saline crusts which are found covering the leaves of a few plants grow- ing on the arid ground of steppes and deserts in the neighbourhood of salt lakes and on the dry tracts of land near the seashore. Owing to the fact that in these 236 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. situations crystals of salt are sometimes to be seen separated out from the soil, and lying as a white efflorescence upon the ground, it used formerly to be believed that the salt incrusting leaves and stems was derived, not from the plants in question, but from the soil around, and had only spread from there over the various plant- members. But this is not the case. Asa matter of fact, the salt observed on the leaves and stems of Frankenia, Reaumuria, Hypericopsis persica, and a few species of Tamariz and Statice, is produced from the substance of the leaves. It is excreted in just the same way as the crust of lime, above described, is from the leaves of saxifrages. To the naked eye the surfaces of the leaves in all the plants enumerated have a punctate appearance. On closer inspection, it is evident that, corresponding to each dot, there is a little cavity, the deepest part of which is constructed of cells with extremely delicate external walls. In quite young leaves only a single thin- walled cell of the kind is to be seen at the bottom of each shallow depression. But this divides, and, by the time the leaf is full-grown, from two to four cells are seen to have arisen by division of the one cell. Stomata are, in addition, intercalated in the membrane in the neighbourhood of these thin-walled cells, and, in the rainy season, when there is no lack of water in the habitats of the plants in question, a watery juice, containing a large amount of salts in solution, exudes from these stomata. The saline solution soaks over the whole surface of the leaf, and in a dry atmosphere crystals form from it and adhere to the leaf in the form of little gland- like patches or continuous crusts. If these tamarisks, frankenias, and reaumurias are observed during a rainless season, the crystals of salt are seen under the noon-day sun glittering on the leaves and stems, and may be detached in the form of a fine crystalline powder. But if the same place is visited after a clear night, no trace of crystals is to be seen; the little leaflets have a green appearance, but they are covered with a liquid with a bitter salt taste,’ and are damp and greasy to the touch. The crystals have attracted moisture from the air during the night, and have deliquesced, and the saline solution not only covers the whole of the leaf, but also fills the little cavities visible as dots to the naked eye. The thin-walled cells at the bottom of the cavi- ties differ from the rest of the epidermal cells and the guard-cells of the stomata, in that they are susceptible of being wetted, and they may act as absorption-cells, and allow the water, attracted by the salts from the air, to pass through their thin walls into the interior of the leaves. When the air dries under the rising sun, crystals are again formed from the solution of salts, and, covering the leaves once more in the form of crusts, fill up the depressions and protect the plants during the hot hours of the day from excessive evaporation. Whilst, therefore, in the dewy night these plants are indebted to their salt crusts for water, they are in the day-time preserved from desiccation by the action of the same contrivance. 1 The salt incrustations which were removed from plants of Frankenia hispida, collected on a Persian salt-steppe, consisted principally of common salt (chloride of sodium). They contained in smaller quantities, gypsum, mag: nesium sulphate, calcium chloride, and magnesium chloride. ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. 237 It is also worthy of mention that papille are developed near the absorption- cells, with a view to the retention of the salt crystals, similar to those which hold the calcareous incrustations on the leaves of saxifrages and Acantholimon. The leaves of plants covered with crystals of salt are also for the most part furnished with little bristles, to which the salt adheres so firmly that it 1s not readily detached, even by violent shaking. But however striking the analogy between the development and significance of lime crusts and salt crusts respectfully, there is the essential difference that the former have not, like the latter, the power of attracting moisture from the air. And on this particular stress must be laid. In the hilly and mountainous tracts on the shores of salt-lakes or of the sea, where tamarisks and frankenias are especially wont to live, the sandy ground dries up to such an extent in the height: of summer that it is scarcely conceivable how plants growing in it are able to preserve their vitality. The proximity of the sea has no immediate effect on the moisture of the ground in such situations. The sea-water does not penetrate into the ground far beyond the high-water line, and it is out of the question that the layers of soil serving as substratum to the frankenias and tamarisks should be irrigated by subterranean water. When in summer there is an absence of rain for months together, these plants—even though in close proximity to the sea—would necessarily perish of drought. Only the circumstance that they turn to account the moisture of the atmosphere by means of the excreted salts renders it possible for them to flourish in these most inhospitable of all inhospitable sites. Many plants which are periodically exposed to great dryness have the tips of the teeth on the leaf-margins thickened into little cones or warts. They also glitter somewhat and at times are sticky. The glitter and viscidity are due to a resinous slimy substance, which often contains sugar and tastes sweet. This substance covers the teeth and sometimes spreads from the teeth inwards to a great dis- tance over the face of the leaf in the form of a delicate film-like varnish. The greatest resemblance exists between this varnish (sometimes known as “balsam ”) and the secretions of the glands on the leaves of the Alpine Rose and of the glandular hairs on those of Centawrea Balsamita. It is excreted by special cells, which are intercalated in the epidermis of the foliar teeth, and are at once marked out from the other cells of the epidermis by the facts that their protoplasm is of a brownish colour and that their external walls are easily permeable by water. The excretion of the varnish-like layer takes place at a time when the entire plant is dis- tended with sap, chiefly, therefore, in the spring. When summer is at its height the varnish dries and thenceforward affords an excellent preservative from the risk of too much evaporation from the cells it covers, and especially from those situated on the teeth of the leaves by which it was excreted. But if this dried film of varnish is wetted it saturates itself quickly with water and renders moisture accessible to the cells beneath it. Thus its value is similar to that of the crusts of lime and salt on the leaves of the plants above described. When moist it effects the absorption of water, when dry it guards against desiccation. 238 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES, The reason for the contrivance just described being exhibited especially by the marginal teeth of the leaf, lies in the fact that dew is deposited particularly at those spots. If one looks at the leaves of the dwarf almond and plum trees in the steppe-districts, after clear summer nights, one finds a dewdrop suspended to every tooth on the margins; but by noon all the teeth are dry again and protected from loss of water by the coat of varnish. Moreover, not steppe-plants alone, but very many plants which grow in poor sandy soil on the banks of streams and rivers, exhibit this contrivance for the direct absorption of water from the ‘atmosphere. Instances are afforded by the Sweet Willow, the Crack-willow, Poplars, the Guelder- rose, the Bird-cherry, and many others. It is at once evident that this contrivance is observed chiefly on the leaves of trees, shrubs, and tall herbs, whilst incrustations of lime occur only on shorter plants with rosulate leaves spread out on the ground, or with rigid acicular leaf-structures. The grounds of this distinction may well reside in the fact that the weight of a crust of lime is many times as great as that of the dry film of varnish. A load capable of being borne without hazard by the leaves of a Statice plant, they being spread out on the ground, or by the rosettes of Saaifraga Aizoon, would be unfit for the leaves of a Cherry or Apricot tree, or for those of the Sweet Willow, or the Crack-willow; indeed the branches of these trees would break down under the burden if their leaves were incrusted with lime. In many cases only a few of the marginal teeth of the leaf are transformed into absorbent apparatus, and special contrivances then always exist to convey rain and dew to those teeth. The Aspen (Populus tremula) serves as a very good example of this. This tree has, as is generally known, two kinds of leaves. Those arising from the branches of the crown have long petioles and lamine of roundish outline and with somewhat sinuate margins; those which are borne by the radical shoots have shorter stalks and larger sub-triangular lamine sloping outwards; and the whole leaf is so placed and its margin so curved as to oblige the rain which strikes the upper surface in its descent to flow down towards the petiole (see fig. 551). Now, situated exactly on the boundary of lamina and petiole are two cup-shaped structures (fig. 55) originating from the lowest teeth of the leaf, and so arranged that every drop of rain descending from the lamina must encounter their shallow cavities and fill them with water. These cups are brown in colour and the size of a grain of millet; and the cells of their epidermis are furnished with a thick cuticle. Only the cells lining the shallow depression of each cup have thin walls, and they excrete a sweet-tasting, slimy, resinous substance which in dry weather films over the cavity like a varnish, and protects, at all events, the cells lying beneath it against an injurious desiccation. When, however, this coat is itself in contact with water it swells up, and the moisture is then absorbed by the cells in the pit-like depression and is transmitted to the vessels running underneath the cups (see fig. 55°). A number of tall herbs, principally of the group of Composite, have, like the Aspen, leaf-teeth which are developed at the part where petiole and lamina join and act as organs of absorption. In some, besides, the margin of the green laming extends in the form of a narrow ridge down the pale canaliculate petiole; and, when ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES, 239 this is the case, teeth of the kind are found on this narrow green ridge which runs along the groove. In Télekia, a handsome herbaceous plant of wide distribution in the south-east of Europe, these teeth—conical or club-shaped—springing from the margin of the petiole-groove are incurved, and are in general so placed that their blunt apices prcject into the groove. But precisely on these obtuse tips of the teeth are situated cells with very thin outer walls easily permeable to water, and having contents with a strong attraction for it. Thus, as soon as the groove of the Fig. 56.—Water-receptacles. 1In a Teasel, Dipsacus laciniatus. 2In the American Silphium perfoliatum. petiole is filled with rain, collected from the surface of the leaf, the tips of the conical teeth are moistened, and they suck up the water. Lastly, we have to mention the curious receptacles appertaining to foliage- leaves in which water from the atmosphere accumulates and continues to stand for weeks without being protected from evaporation by the excretion of special substances. Any region or portion of the leaf may participate in their construction. In Sazxifraga peltata the lamina is shaped like a shield and forms a shallow plate with the concave surface turned to the sky. In the Cloud-berry (Rubus Chame- morus) the formation of basins is brought about by the margins of the reniform lamina being superimposed over one another as if to make a spathe. In the various species of Winter-green, especially in Pyrola wnijlora, the pale cauline leaves, 240 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. inserted above to the green leaves, are metamorphosed into little saucers. In one species of Teasel, Dipsacus laciniatus (see fig. 561), and in the North American Silphium perfoliatum (fig. 56 *) the two sheathing portions (vaginz) of every pair of opposite leaves are connate and form comparatively large and deep funnel-shaped basins, from the middle of which rises the next higher internode of the stem. In several Meadow-rues (Thalictrwm galioides and T. simplex) the secondary leaflets, which are opposite one another and shut close, almost like the valves of a mussel, are moulded so as to form cavities for the retention of water, and in many Umbellifere, such as Heraclewm and Angelica, the vagina of each individual leaf is ventricose or inflated, thus forming a sac enveloping the segment of the stem which stands above it. These basins, saucers, and dishes are always so placed, relatively to their surroundings, that the water derived from rain and dew is directed into them from the surfaces of the leaves, or by the segment of the stem which rises from their centres, and thus it is that the depressions are filled. Whether in all cases much of the water accumulated is absorbed is certainly open to doubt. In the case of the leaves of the Alchemilla (fig. 527), which exhibit the phenomenon so conspicuously that the plant has received the popular name of Dew-cup; the absorption of water is, at anyrate, very inconsiderable, and here the retention of the dew secures advantages of a different kind to which we shall presently have occasion to return. On the other hand, it is established that in the case of basins belonging to tall herbaceous plants, particularly such as grow on steppes and prairies where often no rain falls for a long interval, the water collected is absorbed by the glandular hairs and thin-walled epidermal cells developed within them. The fact of this absorption may be proved by a very simple experiment. Let a stem of the Silphium, represented in fig. 562, be cut off beneath the pair of connate leaves, which form a basin by their union, and let the cut surface le closed with sealing-wax, so that no water can be taken up by the stem from below. If the water accumulated in the basin is now emptied out, the leaves shortly become flaccid and droop; but if the basin is left full of water, the leaves preserve their freshness a long while and do not begin to wither until all the water has evaporated and disappeared from the basin. If oil is poured upon the collection of water in the basin, so that evapora- tion from the latter is impeded, a constant diminution of the water in the basin is observed notwithstanding; this leads to the conclusion that the water in question is really taken up by the absorption-cells at the bottom of the basin and conveyed to the tissue of the leaf. The first thing that strikes one on surveying once more all the plants possessing on their aérial organs special contrivances for water-absorption is that a large proportion of them have taken up their abode in swamps and on the banks of rivers and streams, or if not there, at all events in situations where no danger exists of the ground being thoroughly dried up. No doubt this appears to be inconsistent. How are we to explain the fact that Gentianes, ashes, willows, alpine roses, bog-mosses, &c., are still in need of water from the atmosphere, when they all ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. 241 grow either in damp meadows, peat-bogs, on the borders of never-failing springs, or in ever-moist ravines, where their requirements in respect of nutrient water and imbibitious water can be supplied all around by means of the roots? A glance at the company in which these plants occur may perhaps lead to a solution of the problem. In the damp meadows and along the margins of springs where gentians, the Sweet-willow, and plants of that kind are found, the Butterwort (Pinguicula), which has been described in earlier pages amongst carnivorous plants, is never absent; whilst wherever the pale cushions of the Bog-moss spring, there also the Sun-dew is certain to spread out its tentacles for the capture of prey. With reference to community of site the assumption is warranted that all these plants which flourish under identical conditions of life endeavour to acquire the same material by means of their aérial parts. Now, this material cannot well be other than nitrogen, of which they do not find a sufficient store in the substratum. What then is more natural than that those plants, which are not adapted to the capture of animals, should use their aérial organs, when these are moistened with rain or dew, to take up direct nitric acid and ammonia, which are contained— though in small traces only—in the atmospheric deposits, instead of waiting till compounds of such great importance to them penetrate into the ground where they may chance to be detained at spots whence the roots could only obtain them after long delay and by a highly complicated process? When one considers that plants, growing amid the sand and detritus of steppes, on ledges, and in crevices of steep rocks, or epiphytic on the bark of trees, are also able to acquire little or no nitrogenous food from the substratum by means of their roots, their especial equip- ment with apparatus for the absorption of atmospheric water becomes explicable on the ground of the latter being the medium of solution and transport of nitrogenous compounds. In the case of epiphytes and of plants growing on steppes or rocks, there is the additional consideration that a supply of pure water, supplemental to that which can be withdrawn from the substratum, must be very welcome to them in dry weather, and that at such times it is a great advantage for the atmospheric water to be absorbed directly by the aérial organs instead of reaching them in a roundabout manner through the substratum. If this idea is justified, the atmospheric moisture taken up by the aérial organs with the help of the above-described contrivances, would be of value to the plant chiefly in being a carrier of nitrogenous compounds, and in this acceptation would have to be looked upon as water of imbibition. Whether it is also used, at least in part, as food-material can neither be asserted nor controverted. A separate absorp- tion of water which serves only for motive power, and of that which is in addition employed in the construction of organic compounds does not take place in a plant, it is not possible to make any a priori statement concerning the moisture taken up, as to which part it has to play in the plant. Most probably the allotment of functions is not at all uniform, but varies considerably according to conditions of time, place, and requirement. On a former occasion it has been mentioned that small animals are not Vot. I. 16 242 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. infrequently killed accidentally in the water filling the larger kinds of basins formed as parts of foliage-leaves, that pollen, spores, and particles of earth also are blown by the wind into these basins, and that, after the ensuing solution and decomposition of the organic and mineral bodies in question, the water exhibits a brownish colour and contains organic compounds as well as food-salts in solution. It is not necessary to repeat that these compounds are able to pass into the interior of the plant with the water through the action of the absorption-cells which are never absent from the bottom of the basins; but it seems proper to consider specially in this connection the most conspicuous cases of the phenomenon which have been observed. The greatest quantity of matter, dissolved and undissolved, is found in the flat, saucer-shaped lamine of Saaifraga peltata, which grows on the sites of springs in the Sierra Nevada of North America. The water in these saucers is sometimes coloured quite a dark brown by the presence of decayed beetles, wasps, centipedes, fallen leaves, and animal excreta; and when it evaporates a regular crust is left behind at the bottom of the reservoir. Three days after rain I still found in the inflated vagina of Heraclewm palmatum, a species of cow-parsnip, a pool of brown water 2 cm. deep, and at the bottom a deposit of blackish, oily mud in which the remains of decayed earwigs, beetles, and spiders, were still recognizable. The same thing is observed in the cisterns of Bromeliaceew and in the water-basins of Dipsacus laciniatus and Silphiwm perfoliatwm (fig. 56), and it is interesting to find there are cells also at the bottom of the basins of the Dipsacus in question from which protoplasmic threads radiate forth, as in the case of the chambers of the Toothwort, and that numberless putrefactive bacteria always make their appearance in the water in these basins. The quantity of organic residue is less considerable in the saucer-shaped leaves of pelargoniums, but, on the other hand, earthy particles are frequently met with in them to such an extent that, when the water has evaporated, the concave surface of the leaf is covered with an ashen-gray layer of earth. Observations of this nature establish the conviction that no sharp line of demarcation exists in respect of the absorption of water either between carnivorous plants and land plants, or between land plants and saprophytes, or between saprophytes and carnivorous plants; and they lead further to the conclusion that water, mineral food-salts, and organic compounds are susceptible of being taken up not only by subterranean but also by aérial absorptive apparatus LICHENS. 243 6. SYMBIOSIS. Lichens.—Cases of symbiosis of Flowering Plants having green leaves with the mycelia of Fungi destitute of chlorophyll Monotropa.—Plants and Animals considered as a vast symbiotic community. LICHENS. In describing the vegetation of a limited area botanical writers are apt to desig- nate the various species of plants as “denizens” of the country in question. The conditions under which the plants live are likened to political institutions, and the relations existing amongst the plants themselves are compared to the life and strife of human society. By no means the least important factor in the suggestion of these analogies is the circumstance that often as a matter of fact one has opportunities of seeing how the species of plants which live together in a locality are dependent in various ways upon one another; how they exist in continual con- flict for the food, the ground, for light and air; how some are preyed upon and oppressed by others, whilst others are supported and protected by their neighbours; and how, not infrequently, quite different species join together in order to attain some mutual advantage. As regards the preying of one upon another the subject has been treated in detail in a previous chapter, and it was also stated then that the term parasite can only be applied to those plants which withdraw materials from the living parts of other organisms without rendering a reciprocal service in return. The host attacked by a parasite supplies food and drink without being in any way compensated. One might suppose that nothing would be simpler and easier than to ascertain the existence of this relationship, and yet many difficulties are encountered in the determination of parasitism in individual cases. The main difficulty is due to the fact that one cannot always say with certainty whether the host does not perhaps get some advantage from the parasite which drains its juices. Should this be the case, however, the latter would be no longer a parasite, and the relationship between the two would rather be that of simple commerce and mutual assistance, an ami- cable association for the benefit of both. Whilst discussing the second series of parasites, the fact was mentioned that the plants upon which the various species of Eyebright fasten their suckers suffer no apparent injury as a consequence of this connection. The rootlet organically united to the suckers does, it is true, die away in the autumn; but the Eyebright also withers at that season, and it is not inconceivable that the useful substances existing in the green leaves of the Eyebright may be transferred, shortly before the latter withers, to the host-plant and deposited there at a convenient time in the permanent part of the root as reserve-material, and that in this way the host-plant ultimately derives benefit from the so-called parasite. The idea here suggested as a possibility for the case of Eyebright and the grasses connected with it is an ascer- tained fact in the case of some other plants. For plants are known which unite to 24,4 LICHENS. form a single organism and thenceforward so co-operate in their functions that ultimately both derive advantage from the arrangement. The one takes food-stuffs from the substratum and from the air and transmits them to the other; whilst, in the green cells of the other, the raw material is worked up, under the influence of sunlight, into organic compounds. The organic compounds thus created are used by both for the further production of organs, and therefore a connection such as this must be looked upon as a true case of symbiosis, 7.¢. associated existence for purposes of nutrition. The first place amongst social communities of the kind must be assigned to Lichens, a section of Cryptogams possessing an extraordinarily large number of species and differentiated into thousands of forms, representatives of which are Fig. 57.—Gelatinous Lichens. 1 Ephebe Kerneri; x450. 2% Collema pulposum; natural size. 8 Section through Coll pul 3 xX 450 DP everywhere distributed, from the sea-shore to the highest mountain peaks yet scaled by man, and from the tropics to the arctic and antarctic zones. The partners in the Lichen communities appear to be, on the one hand, groups and filaments of round, ellipsoidal, or discoid green cells belonging to plant species included under the general name of Algw; and, on the other hand, pale, tubular cells or hyphe, which are destitute of chlorophyll, and pertain to species of plants comprised under the general name of Fungi (see fig. 58). The form assumed by a large proportion of these lichens is that of incrustations on stones, earth, bark, or old wood-work; the entire structure of the lichen is either ensconced and imbedded in the depressions of weathered surfaces of stone, or else between the cell-walls of dead fragments of wood and bark, so that it often happens that attention is only drawn to its presence by the altered colour of the substratum, or by the fructifications which lift their heads above the substratum. Lichens of the kind are termed Crustaceous Lichens, and the wide-spread Graphic Lichen (Lecidea geographica) may serve as an example. A second great group nearly allied to the first is that of Foliaceous Lichens. The form of the LICHENS. 245 vegetative body in these is best compared to the foliage-leaves of the Curled Mint, with their corrugated or sinuate margins, or to those of Malva rotundifolia. It may also be described as a number of lobes radiating irregularly and bifurcating repeatedly, and only lightly joined to the substratum by root-like fringes, and there- fore capable of being readily loosened and detached. The light-grey Parmelia sawatilis, which bear brown saucer-shaped fructifications, may be taken as a repre- sentative of these Foliaceous Lichens. The Fruticose Lichens are distinguished as a third group in which the thallus rises from the ground in the shape of a shrub, whilst the cylindrical, fistular, and ligulate stemlets, which ramify profusely, are only adherent to the substratum by a very small surface at the base. With these are associated the Beard Lichens, which hang down from the bark of old trees in the form of pale, copiously-branched filaments. Lastly, there is a fifth group, the Fig. 58.—Fruticose and Foliaceous Lichens, 1 Stereocaulon ramulosum in conjunction with Scytonema; x650. 2 Cladonia furcata with Protococcus; x 950 8 Coccocarpia molybdea; section, x650 (after Bornet). Gelatinous Lichens, which when moistened look like dark, olive-green, or almost black lumps of wrinkled and wavy jelly or as if composed of variously-divided bands and strips packed together into little cushions. In the gelatinous expansions last mentioned the algal cells are arranged in moniliform rows and are interwoven with the hyphal filaments of the fungus throughout the entire thickness of the thallus, as in Collema pulposwm (see fig. 57? and 573), or else they form regular ribbon-shaped double rows, interwoven with few hyphe, as in Ephebe Kerneri (see fig. 571). In crustaceous, foliaceous, and fruticose lichens, the algal cells constitute a disorderly heap and are crowded together in the middle stratum of the thallus, where they are imbedded between an upper and a lower layer of densely felted hyphal threads, as in Coccocarpia molybdcea (fig. 58°). Seeing the wide distribution of lichens it must be assumed that both partners occurring in the lichen-thallus are able to range about with extraordinary ease and latitude. When one observes how patches of the most various lichens are produced in a few years after a landslip on the freshly-broken surfaces of the stones which 246 LICHENS. have fallen down into the valley beneath, one can only explain the phenomenon by supposing that the algal and fungal cells concerned have been blown together, and that the opportunity has been afforded them on the blocks of stone of contracting a union. Now, so far as regards one of the two partners, viz.: the one devoid of chlorophyll, and known as a fungus—the idea that everywhere in the air spores of fungi are swarming about is so familiar to us that the supposition of an occasional stranding of individual spores, which are being blown about by the wind, upon the moist broken surfaces of stones can encounter no opposition. Respecting those spores in particular which are ejected from the aérial fructifications of lichens, the discussion of their life-history and distribution must of course be reserved for a later section; but it is necessary to make here the one statement that provision exists for the most profuse and distant dissemination of these spores. Thus, in the case of one of the partners, there is no difficulty in realizing its ubiquity. But when one comes to the Algw, the name at first calls up to mind the green filaments which occupy our pools and ponds, or the brown wracks and red Florideze of the sea-shore, and we ask ourselves how it can be possible for these plants to occur on fractured surfaces of stone, especially on the débris of mountain sides. Indeed, it is certainly not Alge of these kinds that take part in the construction of Lichens. The name Alge is properly only a general name for all Thallophytes containing chlorophyll, and it is applied to many small organisms besides those mentioned above, namely, to numbers of Nostocines, Scytonemee, Palmellaces, Chroolepides, and these are the kinds which fall in with the cells of fungi and form lichens in conjunction with them. Owing to their minute size, they are apt to escape observation, and, in general, only attract attention when myriads of them clothe the bark of trees, cliffs, stones, or earth. In these situations they need but little moisture, and it is not necessary for any of them to live under water like other alge; they become desiccated without sustaining the slightest injury and make their appearance on the substratum occupied by them at the first stage of their development, as powdery coats, and, in this condition being extremely light, are liable to be blown away by a wind of moderate strength, and so distributed over mountain and valley. That this dissemination is not merely hypothetical but an actual fact has been susceptible of easy proof by the following experiment, made in a mountain-valley in the Tyrol. A plane surface covered with white filter-paper, which was kept moist, was exposed to a south wind; in the course of a few hours numerous particles, like dust, adhered to the paper, and amongst them cell-groups of Nostociness and others of the above-mentioned alge occurred regularly, in addition to organic fragments of the most various kinds, such as pollen-grains and spores of all sorts of mosses and fungi. All these bodies were deposited in the little depressions on the sheet of paper, and in the same way they rest in the grooves, cavities, and cracks in the surfaces of stone, bark, and old wood-work, where they succeed in reaching a further development as soon as the requisite quantity of water is provided. Now, if at these places the little algal cell-groups meet with hyphx belonging to the LICHENS. Q47 other potential partner, the latter embrace and enmesh them, as is shown in the above figures, and thus is produced the confederacy called a Lichen. The member destitute of chlorophyll takes up nutriment from the external environment; it possesses, in particular, the property of condensing aqueous vapour, and has, besides, the power of bringing the solid substratum partially into solution by means of excreted substances; it effects adhesion to the substratum, and, in a majority of cases, determines the form and colour of the lichen-thallus as a whole. The second member, whose cells contain chlorophyll, undertakes the task of producing organic matter, under the influence of sunlight, from the materials conveyed to it; by this means it multiplies the number of its cells and increases in volume, whilst, at the same time, it yields to its mate so much as is necessary in order to enable the latter to keep pace with it in growth. The number of alge which enters into a partnership of this kind is, in any case, much less considerable than that of the fungi, and it must be assumed that one species of alga may unite with the hyphe of different lichen-fungi. The extreme variety, moreover, in the combinations of the two sorts of confederate occurring on a very small area is obvious from the circumstance that it is not rare for half a dozen different species of lichen to spring up side by side on a patch of rock no bigger than one’s hand. Whether they all achieve an equally hardy development, or whether some perchance are not crowded out and overgrown by others depends on various external conditions—on the chemical composition of the substratum, and particularly on the conditions of moisture and illumination of the site in question. Lichens are very sensitive in this respect, and the different sides of a single rock often exhibit quite different growths of lichens. A very instructive example of this is afforded by a marble column near the famous castle of Ambras in Tyrol. This column is octagonal, and has been standing in its place for more than two hundred years, with all its sides exposed to wind and weather. Lichens have settled on all the eight faces, and, indeed, are present in such abund- ance that the stone is quite covered by patches the size of a man’s hand. Many of these growths are but poorly developed, and not susceptible of being identified with certainty; but altogether on this column there must be over a dozen different species, the germs of which can only have been brought by winds. These species are, however, by no means uniformly disposed; some prevail on one side, some on another, and a few are confined exclusively to one of the eight faces. Of three species of Amphiloma, the one named A. elegans is restricted to the warmest side, ae. the face exposed to the south-west; a second, Amphiloma murorum, is to be seen on the upper part of the southern face; whilst Amphiloma decipiens occurs on the same face, but only near the ground. On the side with a northern aspect Endocarpon miniatum predominates, and on the north-west face Calopisma citrinwm and Lecidea are the prevailing forms. What thousands of spores and algal cells must have been blown on to this pillar to enable all these combinations to arise! What complex processes must have gone on before the selection of lichens best adapted to each different quarter 248 LICHENS. of the compass was effected on this little marble column! It is necessary to add, however, that lichens growing on stone, bark, or any situation of the kind do not in all cases owe their original appearance on the substratum to a fresh union of Algee and Fungi, but that there is a second mode of distribution of lichens. This method consists in the transportation by air-currents of already completed social colonies to places often situated. at a great distance from the spots where the initial union between Alga and Fungus was contracted. The process is as follows: —in the interior of an old, large, and fully developed lichen-thallus certain groups of cells separate from the rest, each group consisting of one or more green algal cells enmeshed in a dense weft of hyphw. When a sufficient number of these daughter-associations has been formed the thallus of the parent lichen is ruptured and the little miniature social-groups, which are termed “soredia”, come to the surface. To the naked eye a single soredium is only visible as a bright dot, but all together they have the appearance of a mass of powder or meal lying loosely upon the old lichen-thallus. In dry weather this mealy efflorescence is easily blown away with other organic particles. If, then, a soredium thus removed comes to rest in the crack of a rock or on any suitable substratum, the alga and hyphe composing it continue to develop, and the organism grows into a larger lichen-thallus, which is able to repeat the process just described. In regions where lichens abound, soredia of the kind are found regularly amongst the elements of the organic dust, and occur, indeed, mixed with fungal spores and algal cells, so that it certainly happens not infrequently that two spots close together in the same cranny of stone exhibit both sorts of lichen-growth, the one newly produced by the concurrence and union of algal and fungal cells, the other a daughter- association which has arisen from an old lichen, as a soredium, and is continuing its development. Another case of symbiosis allied to that of lichens is manifested by certain Cryptogams which live socially together under water and have received the systematic names of Mastichonema, Dasyactis, Enactis, &. In them also a plant containing chlorophyll, and belonging to the group of Nostocines, appears as one member of the partnership; whilst the second is some species of Leptothria or Hypheothria. The green moniliform rows of cells of Nostocines are enmeshed and wrapped round by the delicate, filamentous cells devoid of chlorophyll of the Leptothria or Hypheothrix; and later, by repeated processes of division, whole colonies of green cell-filaments ensheathed in this manner are produced, which to the naked eye appear as small soft tufts, usually clinging to porous limestone in the spray of waterfalls. In many cases the filaments destitute of chlorophyll rest upon the moderately thickened cell-membranes of the green alge, whilst in other cases they insinuate themselves into the thick cell-membranes, permeate them with their webs, and form in conjunction with them the sheathing envelope. SYMBIOSIS OF PHANEROGAMS AND FUNGI. 249 SYMBIOSIS OF GREEN-LEAVED PHANEROGAMS WITH FUNGAL MYCELIA DESTITUTE OF CHLOROPHYLL.—MONOTROPA. Another instance of symbiosis is observed to exist between certain flowering plants and mycelia of fungi. The division of labour consists in the fungus-mycelium providing the green-leaved Phanerogam with water and food-stufts from the ground, whilst receiving in return from its partner such organic compounds as have been produced in the green leaves. The union of the two partners always takes place underground, the absorbent roots of the Phanerogams being woven over by the filaments of a mycelium. The first root that emerges from the germinating seed of the phanerogamic plant destined to take part in the association descends into the mould still free from hyphe; but the lateral roots and, to a still greater extent, the further ramifications, become entangled by the mycelial filaments already existing in the mould or proceeding from spore-germs buried there. Thenceforward the connection continues until death. As the root grows onward, the mycelium grows with it, accompanying it like a shadow whatever its course, whether the root descends vertically or obliquely, or runs horizontally, or re-ascends, as is sometimes necessary when it happens to be turned aside by a stone. The ultimate ramifications of roots of trees a hundred years old, and the suction-roots of year-old seedlings, are woven over by mycelial filaments in precisely the same manner. These mycelial filaments are always in sinuous curves and intertwined in various ways, so that they form a felt-like tissue, which looks, in transverse section, delusively like a parenchyma. As regards colour the cell-filaments are mostly brown, sometimes they are almost black, and it is rare for them to be colourless. The epidermis of many roots is covered as if by a spider’s web, whilst the hyphe form a complex tangle of bundles and strands broken here and there by open meshes through which the root is visible. In other cases an evenly woven but very thin layer is wrapped round the root; and in others, again, the fungus-mantle forms a thick layer which envelops uniformly the entire root (see fig. 59). Here and there the hyphe insinuate themselves also inside the walls of the epidermal cells, and the latter are permeated by an extremely fine small-meshed mycelial net (see fig. 59%). Externally the mantle is either fairly smooth and clearly marked off from the environment, or else single hyphz and bundles of hyphe proceed from it and thread their way through the earth. When these branching hyphe are pretty equal in length they look very much like ordinary root-hairs. And they not only resemble them, but assume the function of root-hairs. The epidermal cells of the root, which would in an ordinary way act as absorption-cells, being inclosed in the mycelial mantle cannot exercise this function, and have relegated the business of sucking in liquid from the ground to the mycelium. The latter undoubtedly acts as an absorptive apparatus for the partner on whose roots it has established itself; and the water in the soil, together with all the mineral salts and other compounds 250 SYMBIOSIS OF PHANEROGAMS AND FUNGI. dissolved in that water, are caused by the mycelial mantle to pass from the surrounding ground into the epidermal cells of the root in question, and thence onward, ascending into axis, branches, and foliage. Thus the fungus-mycelium not only inflicts no injury on the green-leaved plant by entering into connection with its roots, but confers a positive benefit, and it is even questionable whether a number of green-leaved plants could flourish at all without the assistance of mycelia. The experience gained in the cultivation of those trees, shrubs, and herbs, which exhibit mycelial mantles on their roots, does not, at any rate, lead to that conclusion. Every gardener knows that attempts to rear the various species of winter-green, the bog-whortleberry, broom, heath, bilberries, cranberries, rhododendrons, the spurge-laurel, and even the silver-fir and Fig. 59. 1 Roots of the White Poplar with mycelial mantle. 2Tip of a root of the Beech with closely adherent mycelial mantle; x100 (after Frank). 8 Section through a piece of root of the White Poplar with the mycelium entering into the external cells; x 480. the beech, in ordinary garden soil are not attended with uniform success. Therefore, as is well known, soil consisting of vegetable mould from the top layer of earth in woods or on heath is chosen for the cultivation of species of the genera Hrica, Daphne, and Rhododendron. But it is not even every kind of forest- or heath- mould that can be made use of. When earth of that nature has been quite dry for a long time it is no longer fit for this purpose. On the other hand, it is known that the above-mentioned plants should be transplanted from their forest-home with the soil still clinging to the roots, and it is also laid down as an axiom that the roots of these plants should not be exposed and should be cut as little as possible. The following reasons account for all this. Firstly, fresh earth from a heath, or mould recently dug from the ground in a wood, contains the mycelia still alive, whereas in dry humus they are already dead; secondly, the mycelia woven round the roots are transferred together with the balls of earthy matter suspended to them into the garden; and, lastly, any considerable clipping of the roots would remove the ultimate ramifications which are furnished with the absorbent mycelial manile. The failure of all attempts to propagate the oak, the beech, heath, rhododendron, winter-green, broom, or spurge-laurel, by slips or cuttings, if the shoot which is cut SYMBIOSIS OF PHANEROGAMS AND FUNGL 251 off and used for the purpose is put into pure sand, is explicable in the same way. Limes, roses, ivy, and pinks, the roots of which possess no mycelial mantle, are notoriously propagated very easily by putting branches cut from them into damp sand. Rootlets are at once produced on those parts of the branches which are buried in the sand, and their absorption-cells carry on the task of taking up nutriment from the ground. But though cuttings of oak, rhododendron, winter- green, bog-whortleberry, and broom strike root, no progress in their development is to be observed, because the superficial cells of the rootlets, in these cases, have not the power of absorbing food when they are not associated with a mycelium. It is only when the slips from these plants are put into sand with a rich admixture of humus, the latter having just been taken from a wood or heath and containing the germs of mycelia, that some few are successfully brought to further development. The result is even then often not assured, and the cuttings of several of the plants enumerated die even in sand mixed with humus before they have produced rootlets. Seeing also that the result of attempts to rear seedlings of the beech and the fir in so-called nutrient solutions, where there could be no question of any union with a mycelium, has been that the plantlets dragged on a miserable vegetative existence for a short time and ultimately died, we have good grounds for assuming that the envelope of mycelial filaments is indispensable for the Phanerogams in question, and that the prosperity of both is only assured when they are in social alliance. The facts ascertained in cases of analogous relationship lead one to expect that the fungus-mycelia also derive some advantage from the flowering-plants, the roots of which they clothe, and to which they render the service of acting as absorption- cells. The benefit in question is undoubtedly the same as that derived by the hyphe of a lichen-thallus from the enwoven green cells. The mycelial mantles withdraw from the roots of the Phanerogams the organic compounds which have been elaborated by the green leaves in the sunshine above-ground, and which are conducted thence to all growing parts, that is to say, downwards as well as in other directions, to the tips of the swelling and elongating roots. According to this, therefore, the division of labour between the members of the alliance for joint nutrition consists in the mycelium supplying the green-leaved plant with materials from the ground, and the green-leaved plant supplying the mycelium with substances which have been worked up above-ground in the sunlight. The range of species which live in a social union such as is here described is certainly very large. All Pyrolacez, Vaccine, and Arbutez, most, if not all, Ericacees, Rhododendrons, Daphnoidee, and species of Empetrum, Epacris, and Genista, a great number of Conifers, and apparently all the Cupuliferz as well as several Willows and Poplars are dependent for nutrition on the assistance of mycelia. We find, too, that this condition recurs in every zone and in every region. The roots of the Arbutus on the shores of the Mediterranean are equipped with a mycelial mantle in precisely the same manner as those of the low-growing Whortleberry of the High Alps. 252 SYMBIOSIS OF PHANEROGAMS AND FUNGI. Special importance is given to the social life by the fact that the chief species of Phanerogams participating in it are of gregarious growth and cover whole tracts of country, forming boundless heaths and measureless forests, as, for instance, the various heaths, the oak, the beech, the fir, and the poplar. The conception of this subterranean life affecting every moorland and vast timbered tract is one full of wonder and interest. We can now see why it is that the ground in woods is the abode of such a profusion of fungi. No doubt some of these fungi draw their nutriment exclusively from the store of dead plant-organs accumulated there; but others, as certainly, are in social connection with the living roots of green-leaved plants. It is true we cannot yet state precisely what are the species of fungi which contract this sort of union, or whether generally a definite elective affinity exists between certain fungi and certain green-leaved plants. There is much in favour of this supposition in a few cases: but, on the other hand, it is very unlikely that each of the various Phanerogams occupying a limited area of ground in a pine-forest, where a few square meters of earth contain so many tangled roots belonging to pines, spurge laurels, bilberries, cranberries, heath, and winter-green, that they can only be be separated with difficulty, should select from the great host of fungi growing in the forest a different partner. In instances of this kind it seems just to suppose that the mycelium of one and the same species of fungus enters simultaneously into connection with all or several of the plants growing close together; it is similarly probable that the mycelia of different species of fungi render to one and the same flowering-plant the service of absorption according to the locality in which it occurs. This surmise is supported by the fact that when certain species, brought from distant parts and regularly exhibiting mycelial mantles on the ends of their roots, are reared in our gardens and greenhouses from seed, they unite in these abodes with fungus-mycelia, which certainly do not exist in the regions where the Phanerogams in question grow wild. Thus, for instance, the roots of the Japanese tree, Sophora Japonica, and those of the Epacridez of Australia, are found in European gardens in social union with fungi, which with us are native, but which certainly do not occur in Japan or Australia; and it is therefore scarcely open to doubt that the Sophora Japonica, to take one example, associates itself with different fungi in different regions. Now that the symbiosis of fungi devoid of chlorophyll with green-leaved Phanerogams has been discussed, we are for the first time in a position to deal with that most remarkable of all cases of food-absorption wherein the subterranean roots of a flowering-plant are completely wrapped in a mycelial mantle, whilst the parts which shoot up above ground bear no green leaves, and, in general, possess no trace of chlorophyll. Such is the case of Monotropa, the various species of which are intimately allied in the structure of flowers and fruit with the Primrose and Winter- green, and are met with scattered everywhere in shady woods. Their stems, which are from 10 to 20 centimeters in height and emerge from the mould of the forest- ground in summer time, are thick, fleshy, succulent, and profusely beset with SYMBIOSIS OF PHANEROGAMS AND FUNGI 253 membranous and transparent scales, and the extremity of each is bent back like a hook. The cylindrical flowers are developed at the top of the stem with their open ends turned to the ground, and are half-covered by the scales. Everything about this plant (stem, leaf-scales, and flowers) is of a pale waxen-yellow colour, and the general impression it produces is much more that of a Toothwort, or one of the colourless forest orchids, than of a species of primula or winter-green. Towards autumn, when ripe fruits have been produced from the flowers, the hitherto drooping extremity of the stem lifts itself into an upright position, whilst the entire aérial portion of the plant turns brown and dries up. Every disturbance caused by the wind, however slight, shakes out of the spherical fruits many thousands of tiny seeds as fine as dust, which, like the winter-green seeds, consist of only a few cells, and do not admit of the recognition of any differentiated embryo within them. Moreover, underground, the rhizomes, from which the small group of pale stems have arisen in summer, continue to live through the winter, and a number of new buds are developed on them. On digging down to the hibernating plant and removing the mould which conceals it, one finds at a depth of from 10 to 40 centimeters bodies like coral-stems consisting of dense masses of roots crowded together and ramifying multifariously. All the root-branches are short, thick, fleshy, and brittle, and are matted together to form turf-like masses, which are not infrequently interwoven with the rootlets of pines, firs, and beeches, and have all their interstices filled with humus. Each rootlet is enveloped, right up to the growing apex, in a thick mycelial mantle. The hyphal filaments of this mycelium do not penetrate into the tissue of the root of Monotropa, nor do they send any haustoria into the superficial cells of these roots. The hyphe and the epidermal cells of the root are, however, in such close and continuous contact that sections exhibit a complete continuity of the tissues. Monotropa is therefore only able to withdraw nutriment from the hyphal weft of the mycelium so far as its subterranean parts are concerned, and, seeing that it is quite destitute of chlorophyll, and its aérial stem and leaves display no trace of stomata, the possibility of creating organic matter and of adding in general to its substance by means of its aérial parts is excluded. It therefore receives all the materials of which it is constructed from the mycelium of the fungus, whilst it is not in a position to render anything in return to this mycelium that it has not previously derived from the latter. If the mycelium subsequently withdraws any materials whatever from the still living or decaying Monotropa, the process is only one of restitution and not of exchange. Thus, in this case, there can be no talk of reciprocity in the processes of nutrition or division of labour such as occurs when there is symbiosis. The Monotropa grows in height and in circumference entirely at the expense of the mycelium in which it is imbedded, so that we have here the remarkable phenomenon of a Phanerogam parasitic in the mycelium of a Fungus. We so often come across the converse process in our experience that we cannot easily familiarize ourselves with the idea of a flowering-plant draining the mycelium of a fungus of nutriment: nevertheless there is scarcely any other inter- 254 ANIMALS AND PLANTS A SYMBIOTIC COMMUNITY pretation possible in this case, for all the other hypotheses,—such as that Monotropa enters into connection with the roots of trees, or that it is parasitic in the first stages of development, but subsequently detaches itself from its host and becomes a saprophyte,—rest on inaccurate observations, and have long been disproved. Asa parasite Monotropa ought to have been discussed at the same time as others in earlier pages, but it was not without intention that the description of this plant was reserved for this place, for it would have been difficult to state and explain the method of nutrition exhibited by it before some previous knowledge of the curious phenomena of union of the mycelia of fungi with the roots of green-leaved Phanerogams had been acquired. ANIMALS AND PLANTS CONSIDERED AS A GREAT SYMBIOTIC COMMUNITY. If we look back at the cases of symbiosis already discussed and inquire what is their value, we find it consists in an integration of the functions of plants possessing chlorophyll and plants not possessing it. The reciprocity here implied is, however, at bottom, but a copy of the complementary interaction of plants and animals which takes place on a grand scale in the organic world. The associated plant, destitute of chlorophyll, in which capacity fungi are always the organisms concerned, really plays the same part in the social life as is taken by animals in the great economy of nature, and this is in harmony with the fact that in other respects as well fungi exhibit so many similarities to animals that in many instances one looks in vain for a line of division to separate them from animal organisms. Hence there is no need for surprise when cases come under observation wherein a quite unmis- takably animal organism enters, instead of a fungus, as one of the partners in a symbiotic community. Certain Radiolariz have small yellowish spots upon them, which were formerly held to be pigment-cells, but have proved to be little alge, with cells furnished with true chlorophyll. Similar properties are exhibited by the fresh-water polyp, Hydra, and by the marine sea-anemones. Small alge occur in social union with these also in the shape of cells with membranes made of cellu- lose and containing chlorophyll and starch-grains in their protoplasmic bodies. These algze are in no wise injurious to the animals with which they are associated; on the contrary, their presence is beneficial, their partners reaping an advantage from the fact that the green constituents split up carbonic acid under the influence of the sun’s rays, and in so doing liberate oxygen which may be again taken in by the animals direct, and serve a useful purpose in their respiration and all the pro- cesses connected therewith. Conversely, the alga, in association with the animal’s body, will derive a further advantage from the latter, inasmuch as it receives at first hand the carbonic acid exhaled by the animal in breathing. The small alge living socially with animals cannot be reckoned as parasites in any case, nor can the animals be looked upon as parasites of the alge, but we have here the phenomenon of mutual assistance and of a bond serving for the benefit of both ANIMALS AND PLANTS A SYMBIOTIC COMMUNITY. 255 parties, precisely similar to that noticed in the case of lichens and in the others which have been described above. Several of the liverworts which live as epiphytes on the bark of trees exhibit on the under surface of their leaflets (which are inserted on the stem in two rows, and are pressed flat against the bark) little auricular structures, and in species of the genus Frullania, these take the form of definite hoods or pitchers. The rain that trickles down the trunks of the trees, washing the bark and wetting the liver- worts in its course, fills the hooded receptacles referred to with water, and is retained longer in these protected cavities than anywhere else, if a period of drought ensues and the liverwort becomes dry again. Now these cowls are the abode of tiny rotifers (Callidina symbiotica and C. Leitgebii), which live on the organic dust brought thither with the water. In return for the peaceful home thus afforded them in the hooded chambers of the leaves, the rotifers supply the liverworts in question with nitrogenous food. For as such must serve the matter excreted by the rotifers in the interior of the cowls. Without the intervention of the rotifers, the living organisms (Infusoria, Nostocinez, and spores) contained in the water could not be converted into food by the liverworts, whereas the liquid manure arising from the Infusoria, Nostocinex, and spores, digested in the bodies of the rotifers, contains highly nitrogenous compounds, which are of great value to the liverworts in question, as indeed they are to all epiphytes living on the bark of trees. It stands to reason that the symbiotic liverworts and rotifers derive also a mutual advantage from the fact that the oxygen set free by the former comes into the possession of the rotifers and the carbonic acid emitted by the rotifers into that of the liverworts by the most direct method. Moreover, these cases of partnerships further remind us of other analogous rela- tions existing between plants and animals, which it is necessary to refer to now, although they cannot be treated in detail till later on. A great number of flowering- plants excrete honey into their flowers, and so attract flying insects to them, which supply themselves plentifully, and in their turn render to the plants they visit the service of transferring the pollen from flower to flower, thus making possible the development of fruits and fertile seeds. Certain small moths which visit the flowers of Yucca bring the pollen to the stigmas, and force it into the stigmatic orifices in order that mature fruits and seeds may be produced from the rudimentary fruits, a result which is indeed a matter of vital importance to these moths. For the moths lay their eggs in the carpels of Yucca, and from the eggs larvea are developed which live exclusively on the seeds of this plant. If the Yucca were not fertilized, and did not develop any fruit, the larvee would die of hunger. A similar phenomenon occurs in many other cases of the kind, where both plant and animal reap some benefit. On the other hand, in the formation of galls, which are produced by animals laying their eggs in particular parts of plants, the advantage (with few exceptions) is all on the side of the animals, and these gall- structures might most justly be placed by the side of parasitic structures. It is obvious from all this that such of the mutual relations of plants and of 256 ANIMALS AND PLANTS A SYMBIOTIC COMMUNITY. their relations to animals as are occasioned by the endeavour to acquire nutriment are extremely various and often linked together and complicated or deranged by one another in the most curious manner. Cases occur of a particular plant being socially connected with another, and at the same time also beset by vegetable and animal parasites. The absorption-roots of the Black Poplar are covered with a dense mycelial mantle, so that this tree is associated for purposes of nutrition with the fungus to which the mycelium belongs. Such parts of the roots of the Black Poplar as are left free from the mycelium are fastened upon by suckers sent forth by Toothwort plants, which withdraw from the roots the juices absorbed by the latter from the earth through the instrumentality of the mycelial mantles clothing them. Meantime, in the cavities in the leaves of the Toothwort various small animals are caught and made use of as nitrogenous food. Again, the poplar-tree bears Mistletoe on its boughs, and its presence there is due to the missel-thrush. The thrush takes the Mistletoe-berries for food, and, in return, renders the plant the service of dispersing the seeds and establishing them on other trees. The para- sitic Mistletoe takes its liquid nutriment from the wood of the poplar-tree; but, on the other hand, its own stems are covered with lichens, and these lichens are them- selves a symbiotic community of alge and fungi. Within the wood of the poplar- stems spread the mycelia of certain Basidiomycetes (Panus conchatus and Poly- porus populinus), whilst the foliage-leaves are covered with a little orange-coloured fungus, Melampsora populina. In addition, no less than three gall-creating species of Pemphigus live on the leaves and branches of the Poplar, and a number of beetles and butterflies are nourished by them. Certain lichens, mosses, and liver- worts regularly settle on the bark of old trunks, and included amongst these may be the species of liverwort which is inhabited by rotifers. If all the plants and animals which live upon the poplar-tree, within it or in association with it, are counted, the number turns out to be not much fewer than fifty. ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. 257 7. CHANGES IN THE SOIL INCIDENT TO THE NUTRITION OF PLANTS. Solution, displacement, and accumulation of particular mineral constituents of the soil owing to the action of living plants.—Accumulation and decomposition of dead plants.—Mechanical changes effected in the soil by plants. SOLUTION, DISPLACEMENT, AND ACCUMULATION OF PARTICULAR MINERAL CONSTITUENTS OF THE SOIL RESULTING FROM THE ACTION OF PLANTS. Reference was made in the preceding section to a marble pillar on the faces of which a dozen different lichens have settled in the course of centuries. I again introduce to the reader’s notice this unobtrusive monument in order to demonstrate in its case the changes to which stone is subjected by the plants clinging to it or nestling in its crevices. It may be premised, as a matter of course, that when the marble column was erected two hundred years ago the eight sides were polished, and presented perfectly even surfaces. But what is its appearance to-day? The whole is rough and uneven; in parts it is as though corroded, and there are little pits clustered together in places. The idea might arise that depressions have been formed in course of time by the impact of drops of rain, but nearer inspection shows that there can be no question that the inequalities have been produced in this way; on the contrary, it is by the influence of the lichens adherent to the stone. Especially on the two sides of the pillar facing south and south-west, one sees clearly how each pit corresponds exactly in size to a species of grey lichen there ensconced, and how this lichen, as it continues to grow and extends radially, corrodes and etches the marble it touches in ever-widening circles. The expression “to etch” may here be taken literally, for there is no doubt that the process, the result of which is manifested in the formation of little pits, is mainly caused by the excretion of carbonic acid from the lichen’s hyphe, whereby the calcium carbonate is converted into bicarbonate. The latter, being soluble in water, is, in part, taken up by the lichen as nutriment, whilst part is washed away by the rain. In addition to this chemical action, the hyphal filaments exercise also a purely mechanical influence. A growing hypha penetrates wherever the merest particle of carbonate of lime has been dissolved and accomplishes regular mining operations at the spot. Projecting particles of the carbonate not yet dissolved are separated by mechanical pressure from the main mass; and at the places in question where a lichen is in a state of energetic growth, tiny loose rhombohedral fragments of the lime are to be seen, which are washed away by the next shower or else carried off as dust by the wind. The same process as that which may be so clearly traced on the marble pillar at Ambras takes place, of course, also on the limestone that has not been carved or polished, in every locality where lichens exist at all. We notice it in the case of other kinds of stone as well—in dolomite, felspar, and even in pure quartz rock—for even quartz is not able to withstand the long-continued action of : Vou. I. 17 258 ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. carbonic acid and the mechanical operations above referred to in the performance of which the hyphe act like levers. Some of the powerful iron bands belonging to the great suspension bridge across the Danube at Budapest afford us the opportunity of observing the mining operations of lichens on a substratum of pure iron. Of course in these cases the decomposition and solution initiated by the carbonic acid varies according to the nature of the substratum; the result is, however, invariably the same; there is always a loss of substance on the part of the substratum, and a part of the dissolved matter is always taken up by the adherent plant, whilst another part is carried away either in solution or mechanically by wind or rain, Mosses act in precisely the same manner as lichens. If a tuft of Grimmia apocarpa is lifted away from the side of a block of limestone, it becomes evident that in the neighbourhood of the place where all the stemlets of the little moss- colony meet, the underlying stone is threaded through and through, and rendered friable. There lie the rhizoids imbedded between isolated particles of lime, which are as fine as dust, and have been disintegrated by the chemical and mechanical activity of the organs in question. At spots where plants of Grimmua have died, the limestone always exhibits an obvious loss of substance in the form of unevenly corroded depressions. The fact that the roots of Phanerogams also alter the subjacent stone in a similar manner may be proved by the following experiment. A polished slab of marble is covered with a layer of sand, and seeds of plants caused to germinate in this sand. The roots of the seedlings as they grow downwards come almost immediately upon the marble slab, and, turning round, creep onward in close contact with the stone. After a short time the parts of the slab against which the roots are pressed become rough as though they had been etched; a solution of individual particles of the carbonate of lime takes place under the influence of the acid juice saturating the cell-walls of the root’s cells, and this circumstance reveals itself to the naked eye as a roughness which is readily perceptible. Whereas the loss of substance affecting the solid substratum of plants may thus be at once detected by sight, the removal of constituents of the air and of water eludes direct observation. The ingredients withdrawn by plants are instantly replaced in water and still more in the air by influx from the environment, and obviously no holes or pits are the outcome as in the case of a surface of limestone rock. In the discussions that follow it is important to retain the conception that in the process of vegetable nutrition certain substances may undergo local displace- ment, accumulation, and aggregation, and temporary consignment to a state of quiescence. Ingredients of the earth’s crust are borne upwards into atmospheric regions, and constituent parts of the air are carried deep down into the ground. Lime, potash, silicie acid, iron, &., pass from disintegrated rocks into the realms above ground—into stems and leaves, and to the tops of the highest trees, whilst carbon and nitrogen pass from the aérial shoots and from the foliage spread out in the sunshine into the deepest shafts which the roots have bored for themselves in ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. 259 the ground. If one were to mark out the space of ground from which the lime, potash, and other nutrient salts used in the construction of a birch-tree were derived, its bulk would certainly be found to be much larger than that of the birch; and, if we were to try to estimate the volume of air through which the carbon, which has been converted into organic compounds in the tree, was previously dis- tributed in the form of carbon dioxide, it would turn out to exceed the volume of the birch a thousandfold. In this sense, every plant may justly be considered as an accumulator of those substances which serve for its nutriment. Every plant continues, so long as it lives, to store them up in ever-increasing quantities in its own body, and in the case of long-lived plants there is thus collected ultimately quite a considerable quantity. When the life of an accumulator of the kind is extinguished, those materials which were taken from the atmosphere are able to return into the atmosphere; but such mineral food as has been derived from the ground and lifted into the upper parts of the plant—particularly those above the ground—and has there been amassed in a confined space, does not return to its original place. A dead tree breaks down on the first provocation, and the trunk lies on the ground and rots. Such part of its substance as can pass into the atmos- phere in gaseous form escapes; but the salts accumulated within it, which it raised from deep under ground during its lifetime, are retained by the surface-layers of the soil. Even though some of them are washed out of the trunk by the lixiviating action of rain-water, the superficial layers of earth operate as a filter, and do not allow any part to return to the underlying strata. So, too, the nutrient salts which reach the foliage of plants are added to the top layers of the soil; for fallen leaves go through much the same process as the trunk which is broken by storms and undergoes decay as it lies prostrate upon the ground. Thus, wherever men do not interfere by clearing away the accumulative agents in question, i.e. plants; where there is no removal of the haulms of cereals from fields, or of mown grass and herbs from meadows to serve as hay, or of timber from the forest—wherever, in a word, the vegetable world is left to itself and the natural progress of evolution is not frustrated by any disturbing element—the food-salts which have been amassed will accumulate in the uppermost layers of the earth. Moreover, seeing that, as has been already pointed out, every plant has the power of possessing itself of substances of value to it, even when they are only present in the environment of the roots in scarcely appreciable quantities, it is possible for the top layers of soil to contain a considerable amount of a substance which only occurs in the subjacent rock in such small measure as to be detected with difficulty. The percentage of lime yielded by the subsoil on the Blockenstein, a granitic mountain 1383 meters high, on the borders of Bavaria and Upper Austria, was 2°7, whilst that of the top layer was 19°7; the percentage on Mount Lusen, situated to the north of the Bléckenstein, was 1:9 for the subsoil and 8°6 for the superficial layer. When one considers that fresh plants strike root in the ground near the surface and these again act as accumulators, and remembers in addition that snails make their appearance in abundance wherever vegetable food containing 260 ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. lime is to be found, that these snails again are to be reckoned as accumulators, and that their shells, which consist almost entirely of lime, remain after the animals’ deaths in the top layer of soil, it is not surprising to find that the earth-mould on a granite plateau contains a proportion of lime not much less than that yielded by mould resting on argillaceous limestone: Still more striking than the influence of rock plants and land plants in trans- posing and accumulating lime is the agency of hydrophytes in causing the same results. In the trickling springs of mountainous regions as well as in the standing pools of level country and no less in the depths of the sea, plants occur which obtain part of the carbonic acid they require by the decomposition of the bicar- bonate of lime dissolved in the surrounding water. The monocarbonate of lime, which is insoluble in water, is then precipitated in the form of incrustations upon the leaves and stems of the plants in question. Many of these hydrophytes take up carbonate of lime into the substance of their cell-membranes; and in other cases both phenomena occur, that is to say, not only are they incrusted externally with calcium carbonate, but the cell-walls are also thoroughly impregnated by the same salt. In the streams arising from springs loaded with bicarbonate of lime in solution derived from the heart of a mountain, a number of mosses regularly occur—Gymnostomum curvirostre, Trichostomum tophacewm, Hypnum faleatwm, and others besides. These mosses and also several species of Nostocinese belonging to the genera Dasyactis and Huactis become completely incrusted with lime, in the manner referred to, but go on growing at the apical end as the older and lower parts imbedded in lime die off. In consequence, the bed of the stream itself becomes calcified and elevated, and, in course of time, banks of calcareous tufa are formed, which may attain to considerable dimensions. Banks raised in this manner are known which are no less than 16 meters in height; to construct them mosses must have worked for more than 2000 years. Numerous Stoneworts (species of Chara or Nitella), the Water-milfoil and Horn- wort (Myriophyllwm and Ceratophyllwm), Water-crowfoots (Ranunculus divari- catus and R. aquatilis), and more especially many Pond-weeds (Potamogeton), which grow in continuous masses in still, inland waters, incrust their delicate stems and leaves with lime during the summer, but in autumn shrink away, that is to say, their stems and leaves fall and decay, leaving scarcely any trace of the mass of vegetation till the advent of the following spring. The calcareous deposits, how- ever, are preserved, and, sinking to the bottom of the water where the incrusted plants lived, form a layer which year by year increases in thickness. Anyone who undertakes the investigation of the sequestered wastes of water in the shallow lakes of lowland districts will be convinced of the magnitude of the scale on which this kind of accumulation must take place. As one’s boat glides over places where there is a luxuriant growth of the lime-incrusted Chara rudis and C. ceratophylla, there is a crepitating sound in the water like the snapping of dry sticks of birch- wood. Great numbers of stoneworts are fractured by the boat as it strikes against them, and if one takes hold of the fragments they feel like a heap of brittle glass ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. 261 fibres. What a quantity of carbonate of lime must be deposited yearly at the bottom of these lakes and ponds! Amongst pond-weeds, Potamogeton lucens, in particular, clothes its large shining leaves with a very stout, uniform crust, which drops off in scales as the plant dries, the weight of which can be exactly determined in the case of each separate leaf. The result of careful weighing showed that a single leaf equal in weight to 0°492 grm. was covered with a calcareous crust weighing 1:040 grm. Now, supposing one shoot of this pond-weed, having five leaves, and covering an area of 1 square decimeter, decays in the autumn, and lets its lime sink to the bottom of the pond, the approximate weight of lime deposited each year on a square decimeter of the ground at the bottom is 5 grms., and, if this process is repeated every year, a layer is deposited in ten years which weighs 50 grms., and consists of calcium carbonate and traces of iron, manganese, and silicic acid. There is no doubt that it is possible for calcareous strata of great depth to be produced in this way in fresh water. That also in times past lacustrine deposits of lime have had a similar origin is inferred from the fact that the spore-fruits of stoneworts (Characez) and the nutlets of pond-weeds have been found over and over again inclosed in these formations of lime. Calcareous deposits originating in this manner are, at present at least, less frequent in the sea. Still, the Aceta- bularie undergo similar changes there, and may be the cause of an elevation of the sea bottom and of an accumulation of lime. On the other hand, in the sea, the Lithothamnia and Corallinas play a predominant part, and form—just like true corals, and often indeed in conjunction with these and other marine animals— lime reefs of great magnitude. The agency of plants may occasion accumulations of iron hydroxide, silicic acid, and salts of potassium and sodium at particular places besides lime. The formation of meadow iron-ore, spring iron-ore, and bog iron-ore, the construction of tripoli, agate, and flint, by the conglomeration of siliceous-coated Diatomacez, and the accumulation of potassium and sodium salts in the superficial strata of salt steppes are processes which take place essentially in the same manner as the piling up of carbonate of lime, although upon a more modest scale. The question now arises, why it is that the substances which are stored in pre- ponderant quantities in the vegetable frame, which are the main constituents of the living part of plants, and represent the alpha and omega of plant life, are not pre- served as well as the mineral food-salts in question. Why do not carbon and nitrogen, materials so eagerly appropriated by the living plant, compounded by it with the elements of water, secured in some measure in organic compounds, and constituting the fundamental mass of the vegetable structure, remain behind in the same condition after the death of the plant? When autumn comes and the lime- laden pond-weed dies, only the calcareous crust falls to the ground, and, at the bottom of the pond, enters upon a period of quiescence. The tissue of the plant 1In the case investigated 96 per cent calcium carbonate, 0-28 per cent iron oxide, 1°51 manganese oxide, and 1°51 per cent silicic acid; the last, from the Diatomaces, settled on the calcareous crust. 262 ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. itselfi—all its carbohydrates and albuminoid compounds—cannot remain dormant, but are split up without delay into those simpler compounds of which they were compounded in the summer; and, by the following spring there is nothing more to be seen of any of the pond-weed’s stems and leaves. Certainly this is only to such a conspicuous extent true of plants living under water; dead plants buried in earth or exposed to the atmosphere are resolved less rapidly, and under certain circum- stances deposits of organic remains on limited areas are preserved even almost unaltered through boundless ages. Let us try to obtain a somewhat closer knowledge of these various degrees of preservation. Thoroughly dried wood, leaves, and fruit, if protected from all but transient moisture, are capable of being preserved unaltered for long periods of time. When wood is exposed in a dry place to the sun, it turns brown, and in the course of years becomes quite black outside, the most superficial layers being regularly carbonized, as may be seen particularly well in the case of woodwork situated under the projecting roofs of old mountain chalets. This wood exhibits no sign of crumbling, mouldering, or rotting. In the dry chambers of old Egyptian graves fruits, foliage, and flowers have been found which were laid by the side of the corpses 3000 years ago, and they had not undergone a greater change than if they had been dried but a few days. Even the colours of flowers of the Larkspur, the Safflower, and other plants of the kind, were still to be seen, and the separate stamens in Poppy flowers were in a state of complete preservation. Dryness there- fore may be looked upon par eacellence as one of the preventives of the decomposi- tion of organic matter. The same result as is secured by dryness in the cases cited is brought about in the ground of moors by humous acids. The dead plants saturated with these acids are not resolved into carbonic acid, water and ammonia, but preserve their form and weight almost unaltered, and are converted into peat. Above the mass of peat new generations of plants continue to spring up and produce ever fresh organic matter, which, in its turn, becomes peat, and is added to the mass beneath, so that gradually a very deep bed of organic matter may be accumulated in this manner. In the low country lying between East Friesland and the Hiimmling, from the river Hunte to the marshes on the Dollart, there is a stretch of nearly 3000 sq. kilometers covered with a layer of peat which has an average depth of 10 meters. Of minor importance is the preservation of dead plants and parts of plants in snow and ice. The leaves, twigs, and seeds, which are carried by the wind on to the snow-fields of the high mountains, remain there a long time almost without alteration in respect of form or size; they only turn brown under the influence of the intense sunlight, and at last become quite black as though they were carbonized, which, in fact, they are. So also such insects as meet their death on the snow-fields are converted there into a black, cindery mass. Indeed, even all the minutest organic fragments lying on a glacier become carbonized, and this explains the fact that the so-called eryokone, or snow-dust, which we have already had occasion to allude to, has a graphitic appearance. ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. 263 Dead leaves, haulms, branches, and tree-trunks, when they rest upon damp ground, as also lifeless roots, rhizomes, bulbs, and tubers, buried in moist earth, pass into a state of putrefaction, provided that their temperature does not fall below freezing-point, that is to say, they are resolved into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, the rapidity of the process varying directly as the supply of water and the degree of temperature to which the dead matter is exposed, and inversely as the quantity of compounds of humous acid present. If more dead fragments of plants accumulate within a particular interval of time on one spot than decay, a formation of vegetable mould takes place there; on the other hand, the ground remains destitute of humus when the entire accretion of organic matter is quickly decom- posed as soon as it is dead. The general fact turns out to be that the decomposition of organic bodies is prevented, or at least limited, by a dry condition, and is promoted by moisture, and that it can only be prevented in moist surroundings by the presence of large quantities of humous acids, or by the temperature being low enough to turn water into ice. This result directs attention to those inconceivably small animate beings, which, as has been proved by experience, are arrested in their activity by scarcity of water and are killed by the antiseptic substances referred to. That they are the cause of the resolution of dead plants is corroborated by the facts that they are always present where vegetable putrefaction is in progress, and that, on the other hand, decomposition can be prevented by rendering the access of these minute organisms impossible. First in importance in this respect of course are bacteria, the causal connection of which with processes of dissolution, and especially with those decom- positions, which are known by the name of putrefaction, is established. Of these bacteria, Bacteriwm Termo, and several micrococci, bacilli, vibriones, and spirilla, are the commonest. Their multiplication and the withdrawal for this purpose of substances from dead plants cause a splitting up of the organic compounds in the latter. The albuminoid compounds are first of all peptonized; next, tyrosin, leucin, volatile fatty acids, ammonia, carbon-dioxide, sulphuretted hydrogen, and water are formed, this stage of the process being accompanied by the evolution of an offensive odour of decomposition, and later, nitrous and nitric acids are produced by further oxidation. The carbohydrates, too, chiefly cellulose and starch, are split up, and the products of this analysis, in so far as they are not used up by the bacteria for their growth and reproduction, pass in a gaseous condition into the atmosphere, or into the water surrounding the dead plants. Moreover, the bacteria themselves do not remain at the spots where they have been battening on vegetable matter, but swarm away through the water, or else come to rest in a short time, in which case if the seat of their activity dries up they are blown away by currents of air, and so conveyed to other dead plants. Similar decompositions can be induced by moulds (Eurotiwm, Mucor, Botrytis cinerea, Penicillium glawcwm) as well as by bacteria, and, in addition, the disintegration of wood occasioned by the mycelium of Dry-rot (Merulius lacrymans), the green-rot: of trunks of oaks, and beeches, caused by Peziza eruginosa, the mouldering of wood induced by the mycelium of Polyporus 264 ACTION OF PLANTS ON THE SOIL. sulfwreus and various other fungi, the red-rot, &c., all depend on similar disruptions of the organic compounds in dead plants, and result in the ultimate dispersal of these in the air in the form of carbon-dioxide, ammonia, nitric acid, and water. Thus, ultimately, the exercise of this destructive activity only effects a return of the compounds just enumerated—the most important to plant-life—to the regions whence they had previously been withdrawn by the plants when living. Carbon and nitrogen, in particular, are set free from their bonds and given back to the atmosphere in the form and combination in which they are capable of being appropriated anew by living plants as food-material. Considered from this point of view the phenomena of putrefaction and rotting appear as important and even necessary incidents in the history of the substances which are of the greatest importance to plants. Abhorrence of putrefaction is innate in us all, and everything connected with it—in particular, the entire race of bacteria—is looked upon with aversion. To estimate these processes according to their deserts requires a sort of self-abnegation. But when we overcome our repugnance and weigh the whole subject impartially, we come to the conclusion that the continued existence of vegetable life and of life in general depends upon the occurrence of putrefaction. If the untold numbers of plants which die in the course of a year did not rot sooner or later, but remained unchanged as lifeless forms, a certain quantity of carbon and nitrogen would be idle, being withdrawn from the - sphere of activity and locked up, so to speak. Now, assuming this to be repeated year by year, a time must come when all the carbon and nitrogen would be imprisoned in dead plants. Thereupon, all life would cease, and the whole earth would be one great bed of corpses. Not only putrefaction, but also the minute organisms which excite putrefaction appear in a more favourable light when viewed from this standpoint. Let such bacteria as act in the capacity of foes to the human race, ravaging town and village in the form of infectious diseases, be exterminated if possible; but annihila- tion of putrefactive bacteria would mean a disastrous interference with the cycle of life upon the earth. These latter are not to be reckoned as enemies but friends to human beings. The effect of their invasion of dead plants and animals is certainly first made manifest, not in the most agreeable manner, for some of the substances mentioned as being evolved in the early stages of the onslaught, viz.: various ammoniacal compounds, sulphuretted hydrogen, and the volatile fatty acids, are disgusting to us; but as decomposition advances these phenomena, which are so unpleasant to our senses, abate, and the action of putrefactive bacteria becomes ultimately a beneficent process of purification of the last remnants of dead organisms. The final result of the decomposition of organic bodies by bacteria has been termed mineralization. It is a fact that nothing is ultimately left behind, in the ground or water, of bodies decomposed by the indefatigable exertions of bacteria excepting some nitric acid and the small quantity of mineral food-salts which has been taken up by the living organism in its time and are now in the form of dust and ash. MECHANICAL CHANGES EFFECTED IN THE GROUND BY PLANTS. 265 By filling with water a glass which contains vegetable and animal remains in a state of putrefaction and swarming with bacteria, one is enabled to follow this process of mineralization from day to day. First, a decrease of the organic matter clouding the liquid, accompanied by simultaneous increase of ammonia and nitrous and nitric acids, is observed; then, after about two months, a complete clearing up of the liquid. The water is now colourless and odourless, but a precipitate has formed at the bottom, which contains, in addition to insoluble food-salts, bacteria in a state of temporary quiescence on the termination of their task and waiting till fresh prey becomes accessible. No doubt these processes occur in nature in just the same manner as in the glass of water, and the so-called self-purification of rivers, for example, has been rightly attributed to mineralization. It was long ago noticed that the water of such rivers as flow through great towns and consequently take up considerable quantities of animal and vegetable refuse contains no discoverable trace of all these impurities a few miles below the mouths of the drainage pipes and sewers. The water of the Elbe, which receives the refuse of the towns of Prague, Dresden, and Magdeburg, is so pure at Hamburg that it is there used for drinking purposes without protest’. The Seine, after taking up masses of rubbish in Paris, is already by the time it reaches Meulan, a distance of 70 kilometers, clear and pure again, and does not even exhibit there any traces of the organic matter received in the great city. Were it not for the activity of the putrefactive bacteria, this purification would never take place; and although the statement that putrefactive bacteria are the best of purifiers sounds at first like a paradox, it must be acknowledged to be consistent and based on experience. MECHANICAL CHANGES EFFECTED IN THE GROUND BY PLANTS. All the alterations hitherto spoken of as being brought about in earth and under the influence of vegetation subsisting therein are reducible to chemical transpositions. Added to these, there are always certain purely mechanical changes. The penetration of the rhizoids of a rock-moss or the hyphe of a crustaceous lichen into limestone is accompanied, as has been already stated, by a solution of part of the substratum and a mechanical separation of another part; the rhizoids or hyphe, as the case may be, becoming imbedded amongst tiny detached fragments of the underlying stone. When the hyphe and rhizoids die, the corresponding piece of the substratum is left porous, and admits air and water, whilst other plants are enabled to settle on it, although they may not perhaps possess the power of eating into stone and pulverizing it in the same degree as their predecessors. This is also true of the roots of Phanerogams. The food-seeking root-tips and their absorption- cells displace particles of earth as they insinuate themselves, and when they decay later on, the soil at those particular places is intersected by passages of varying size. No doubt these passages mostly collapse like the abandoned shafts and galleries of a mine, but some trace of root-action always remains behind in the shape of an 1This was written before the last outbreak of cholera. 266 MECHANICAL CHANGES EFFECTED IN THE GROUND BY PLANTS. increased looseness of the soil in the locality, a result of the greatest importance, inasmuch as it enables air and water to permeate to a depth much more easily and quickly by the ways that the roots have previously opened up. Dead roots rotting underground constitute, moreover, the source of the carbonic and nitric acids which help to render available the mineral constituents, and so serve the turn of subsequent generations of plant-settlers on the same spots, whilst they accomplish fresh disin- tegration of the substance of the soil. If, however, the subterranean parts of plants are continually engaged in mining, and so change in various ways the position of the component particles of soil, the organs above ground exert an influence in some measure opposed thereto, in that they retain and bring to rest particles of earth which are set in motion by currents of air or water. In the section that treats of the absorption of nutrient salts by lithophytes, attention was directed to the fact that the dust pervading the atmos- phere, and blown from place to place by the wind, is arrested to a remarkable extent by mosses and lichens. One need only detach a small tuft of the common Barbula muralis, which everywhere occurs on walls by roadsides, to convince oneself of the extent to which dust from the road is lodged amongst the leaves and stemlets, and of the tenacity of its adhesion. Moreover, not only such dust as rises from roads, but also that variety which, though not easily observed, yet fills the air of remote mountain-valleys, of arctic ice-fields, and of the most elevated parts of the earth’s crust, is arrested in those localities by mosses and liverworts, and by many Phanero- gams besides, the growth of which is similar to that of mosses. There is not much less dust clinging amongst the stemlets of the dark Grimmias, Andrezas, and other rock-mosses, which grow in small cushion-like tufts on weather-beaten mountain crags, than is attached to the Barbula living by the dusty roadside. If one of the tufts in question is detached from its substratum, a fine powder composed of mica- scales, granules of quartz, chips of felspar, and a number of minute organic frag- ments pours out from between the moss-stems, whilst another portion of this finely powdered earth is left clinging to the leaves and stemlets, and is found to be regu- larly adnate to them. It is never, however, the still fresh and living upper parts of these leafy moss- stems that arrest and carry dust, but always the older dead parts below. The lower dead half of the moss, whether still in a state of preservation or already rotting, is alone capable (in consequence of characteristic alterations in the lifeless cell-tissue) of holding fast the atmospheric dust. The under part of moderate-sized cushions of moss constitutes a compact mass composed half of imprisoned dust and half of brown lifeless moss-stems. These little cushions, clothing rocky crags, become a favourable site for the germination of a whole host of seeds, which are conveyed thither by the wind and detained in the same manner as the dust. The seedlings arising from these seeds send their rootlets into the subjacent portion of the bed of moss, where the interstices are full of dust or finely-divided earth. Here they find all the conditions prevailing necessary for their nourishment, and they expand, and, little by little, crowd out the mosses which received them so hospitably, MECHANICAL CHANGES EFFECTED IN THE GROUND BY PLANTS. 267 forming ultimately a bed of flowering plants, including in especial abundance representatives of the orders of grasses, pinks, and composites. Many water-plants—in particular, aquatic mosses and algee—possess, in an almost greater degree than lithophytes or land plants, the power of laying hold of inorganic particles, and thus exercise a far-reaching influence as mud-collectors on the conformation of the ground. It is wonderful how plants are able to arrest large quantities of the fine sand hurried along by a flood, although they are exposed to the violent rush of the water. The tufts of the dark green alga Lemanea fluviatilis and of the aquatic moss Cinclidotus riparius, which cling to rocks in the cascades of clear and rapid mountain torrents, are so conglomerated by mud and sand that they cannot be freed therefrom until the tissue has become dry and shrivelled. Limnobiwm molle, which grows in the turbid waters from glaciers, has such an abundance of earthy particles adhering to it that only the green tips of the leaf-bearing stems are visible above the grey-coloured cushions imbedded in the mud. ‘The felted masses of Vawcheria clavata, filling the channels of apparently clear, gently-flowing streams, are so mixed with mud that if a lump of this alga is fished out, the weight of mud clinging to it exceeds that of the alga itself a hundredfold. In these cases of submerged plants, it is, again, not the living but the dead parts which serve to arrest the mud. On lifting up a lump one sees clearly that only the uppermost and youngest prolongations of the filaments—those situated at the periphery of the algal cushion as a whole—are living and filled with chloro- phyll; the fundamental mass has become colourless and lifeless. But these dead parts, which form a thick felt of interwoven filaments, alone retain in their meshes the finely-divided mud and sand in such surprising quantities; these particles slip off the green living parts without adhering to them. An important consideration in this connection is the fact that the dead cell-membranes swell up and become slightly mucilaginous, so that fine particles of mud lodge more easily in the soft ‘swollen substratum thus formed. Wooden stakes stripped of bark and fixed in a strong current show this very clearly, as do also the trunks of trees that are thrown up by floods and lie stranded on the shore with their bared boughs projecting into the stream. However strong the current to which wood in that condition is ex- posed, it covers itself in a short time with a grey coat consisting of earthy particles brought down by the water. If a piece is cut off and exposed to the air, the earthy deposit does not become detached until the wood-cells have dried up and shrunk. As long as they are moist the particles of mud continue to adhere to them. This mechanical retention and storage of dust by rock-plants and of mud by aquatic plants is of the greatest importance in determining the development of the earth’s covering of vegetation. The first settlers on the bare ground are crustaceous lichens, minute mosses and alge. On the substratum prepared by them, larger lichens, mosses, and alge are able to gain a footing. The dead filaments, stems, and leaves pertaining to this second generation arrest dust in the air and mud in the water, and thus prepare a soft bed for the germs of a third generation, which on rocks consists of grasses, composites, pinks, and other small herbs, and in water 268 MECHANICAL CHANGES EFFECTED IN THE GROUND BY PLANTS. of pond-weeds, water-crowfoots, hornwort, and various plants of the kind. The second generation is produced in greater abundance than the first, and the third develops more luxuriantly than the second. The third may be followed by a fourth, fifth, and sixth. Each successive generation crushes out and supplants the one preceding it. As on the rocky heights and in the roaring torrents of mountains, so also on the sandy plain and in the depths of the sea, a perpetual variation in the nature of the vegetation is taking place. At all times and in all places we see younger genera- tions displacing the older and building upon the foundations laid by their pre- decessors. The first settlers have a hard fight with uncompromising elements to seize possession of the lifeless ground. Years go by before a second generation is enabled to develop in greater luxuriance upon the earth prepared by the first occupiers; but there is no cessation in the productive and regulative effects of vegetable life, and its energy and aptitude in the work result in the erection of its green edifices over wider and wider areas. New germs are established upon the mouldered dust of dead races, and others on the plant forms adapted to the altered substratum, and so, for hundreds and thousands of years, the changes go on, until at length the tops of forest-trees wave above a black and deep soil, the battle-field of a number of bygone generations. Thus, the life of plants, like that of the human race, has its epochs and its history: as in the one so in the other a continual struggle prevails; processes of ousting and of renovation are always in progress, and there are ever new arrivals upon and departures from the scene. CONDUCTION OF FOOD. 1. MECHANICS OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE RAW FOOD-SAP. Capillarity and root-pressure.—Transpiration. CAPILLARITY AND ROOT-PRESSURE. Unicellular plants make use individually of the food material which they absorb from their surroundings, and work it up into the organic substances which they require for their structure and increase in bulk, and also for the production of future generations. In all plants composed, on the other hand, of aggregates of cells, there is a division of labour. Of the protoplasts occupying the cell-cavities of such larger plant-structures, one part provides for the absorption of the water and food-salts, another for the taking in of the gases which are used as food, and yet another part works up this food into organic substances for construc- tive purposes. The centres in which these various industries are carried on are frequently situated at some distance from one another, and it is obvious that there must not only be some communication between the various regions of activity, but that active forces must come into play which will effect the transport of the food from the cells whose function it is to receive it, to those in which it is to be elaborated into building material. It is evident that the greater the distance is between the various centres of the plant in question, the more difficult will be the performance of this task. In aquatic plants and lithophytes, all of whose superficial cells have the power of taking in nourishment from their environment, these distances are proportionately small, while they attain their greatest dimensions in land-plants whose roots are embedded in the earth, and whose leaves are surrounded by air. In trees the food materials which are taken up by the absorbing roots beneath the ground must frequently travel far more than 100 metres before reach- ing the topmost leaves. The path to the summit is very steep, and the fluid in rising must be able to overcome the force of gravitation, which has no inconsider- able significance at heights such as these. Naturally, desire for knowledge has at all times directed attention to this phenomenon, and the most diverse attempts have been made to explain by what means the food-sap taken in by the roots of trees is enabled to reach their summits. It was first considered to be in virtue of capillarity; that just as oil, alcohol, or water, is drawn up the wick of a lamp, the liquid food can rise in the delicate tubular cell-formations called vessels, which, united together in groups or 270 CAPILLARITY AND ROOT-PRESSURE, bundles, traverse the stems and leaves of plants. But the vessels are closed in above and below, and therefore it is impossible that capillarity should be sufficiently developed in them. At best it could only raise the sap a trifling distance, and could never convey fluid to a height of many metres. It is a striking fact that in many plants the ascent of the sap is most vigorous after the evaporation from the superficial parts exposed to the air has been weakest. The so-called “weeping” of vines, 7.e. the outflow of sap from the flat surface of a cut vine-branch, does not take place in summer and autumn, immediately after the branch has been fully adorned with foliage, and when its extensive leaf-surfaces have given up large quantities of moisture to the surrounding air; it occurs at the end of the winter sleep of the plants, when the brown branches rising above the ground are still in a bare and leafless condition. The cause of the ascent, or at least of the ascent in the lower leafless branches, must therefore be sought for in the absorbent roots, and it may be assumed that here the same causes are at work which induce the fluid food materials of the surrounding earth to enter the superficial cells at the root-tips. It has already been shown that the contents of these cells suck up the water of the nutritive ground with great force in consequence of the chemical affinity they have for it, or in other words, that the fluid reaches the interior of plant-cells by endosmosis; it has also been mentioned that in conscquence of the taking in of water the volume of the cell-contents increases, producing pressure from within outwards on the cell-wall, and the cell swells and becomes turgid. From this one of three cases might be deduced:—first, suppose that the cell-wall is so composed throughout that it allows the entrance of water into the cell, but not its exit, and that consequently the cell-contents absorb water, but that a filtration of the same towards the exterior cannot take place. Granted this hypothesis, the cell-wall by virtue of its elasticity would yield to the pressure of the cell-contents, but only within the limits of that elasticity; hence a condition of tension would be produced, in which the reciprocal pressures of the cell-wall and cell-contents would be in equilibrium. In the second case, suppose that the pressure of the cell-contents is greater than the force of cohesion between the molecules of the cell-wall, this consequently ruptures, and the cell-contents issue from the rent which is formed. This phenomenon is seen in certain pollen grains when placed in water. In half a second the cells absorb so much water that they double their volume; the cell- contents still absorb the fluid, and the cell-wall can at length no longer withstand the pressure; it bursts, and the contents, from which the pressure is now removed, pour through the opening, and are diffused in the surrounding water. There is a third case possible. Suppose that in a given cell the opposite walls are not of identical structure; that the wall which is in contact with the damp earth is so organized as to allow the entrance of water, but not its filtration to the exterior, while the opposite wall offers only a slight resistance to such filtration; then by the increasing pressure of the cell-contents fluid will be forced through that wall which offers least resistance, and the greater the affinity of the cell- CAPILLARITY AND ROOT-PRESSURE. 271 contents for the fluids in the nutritive earth, the more abundantly and energetically will this be carried on. The phenomenon can be well seen in some moulds, especially Mucor Mucedo, which makes its appearance in such quantity on succulent fruits; and in the mycelium of the so-called Dry-rot, Merulius lacry- mans. Fluids are sucked up by the lower portions of the tubular cells which cover the nutritive substratum, and expelled again through the walls of upper parts of the same cells, which project freely into the air. These upper portions of the mycelium cells appear as though ornamented with tiny dewdrops, which in the case of the Dry-rot coalesce and attain to a considerable size. Damp woodwork in cellars, where this fungus has established itself, is often thickly besprinkled with the drops which have been excreted on the surface, and if a lamp is brought into the darkness, and the infected places illuminated, hundreds of these tiny drops sparkle and glitter like the “jewels” in a cave of stalactites. Suppose then that such a cell, one wall of which allows fluid to enter, is attached by the wall opposite to that through which the fluid enters, to another cell; then this second cell will absorb the liquid, and, if tubular, the sap may rise higher and higher in it, and by the pressure of the liquid continually arising from below, even be forced through other higher cells which are capable of filtration. Naturally the rising current of sap thus generated follows the line of the least resistance; if then the cell-tissue where this action terminates is perforated by canals ending in pores on the surface, the fluid will emerge from these pores in the form of drops. This actually happens not only in many large-leaved Aroids, but also in plants growing in the open country if the air which passes over the leafy parts above the ground be very humid, and the soil in which the roots are buried proportionately warm. In many plants with succulent foliage, drops of water may be seen issuing from the thin- walled cells and pores of the leaves when the almost saturated air becomes cooled after sunset, while the soil, round about the absorbent roots, having been exposed all the day to the sun’s rays, retains its higher temperature. Young blades of corn have rows of such drops, which look exactly like dewdrops, and have often been mistaken for them. This extrusion of water from the leaves can easily be produced artificially by placing the plants in a saturated atmosphere, and at the same time slightly warming the earth round the roots. There is no doubt that the sap which exudes from the leaf-pores originates in the nutritive soil, and is taken up by the absorbent cells of the root; from these the vessels and cells of the main root and stem, through which the sap can filter, carry it up to the leaves. If, therefore, we cut across a stem a little distance above the ground, we shall see the sap, which has already accomplished half its journey, welling up as drops on the cut surface; 7.e. we shall see the remarkable phenomenon called “weeping”, of which mention has already been made. The quantity of sap which flows from such a cut surface is in many cases astoundingly great. In Java certain Cissus plants, belonging to the family of lianes and living in damp woods, are actually made use of as vegetable springs. The watery sap flows so abundantly from a cut branch that in a very short time it will fill a glass, and forms a cool and 272 CAPILLARITY AND ROOT-PRESSURE. refreshing beverage. Many Araliacee also furnish a sap fit for drinking. Some native Indian genera which are used as vegetable wells have on this account received the name of “plant springs” (Phytocrene, eg. P. gigantea and bracteata). If the young flower-stalk of Agave americana, an American plant which is cultivated in European gardens under the name of the “hundred years’ aloe”, be cut across, in twenty-four hours about 365 grammes, and in a week more than 2500 grammes of sap will flow out. This exudation continues for four to five months, and a vigorous Agave will produce in this time as much as 50 kilogrammes of sap, which will ferment, since it contains both sugar and albuminous substances, and is indeed used by the Americans in the preparation of an intoxicating drink called “ pulque”. The quantity of sap which exudes from vines is also very great. A branch 24 em. thick, cut across 14 m. above the ground, produced within a week over 5 kil. of sap. In a week, from the cut stem of a rose, more than 1 kil. was exuded. From maples and birches a proportionately large amount of sap can be obtained, when the trunks are cut about a metre above the ground. The sap which flows from species of maple contains pure crystallizable sugar, and in some North American species this is present in such abundance that it was found to be worth while to collect the sap, at least in former times. It should be noticed that the volume of the exuded sap is in all these cases greater than the volume of the root together with that of the stump of the stem from which the sap is forced out, and this is a proof that it does not consist only of the water which was contained in the root and stem stump at the time of cutting, but that there is a continual upward current of sap, and that the absorbent cells of the roots, for a long time after the operation, continue to draw up water from their environment. An ingenious experiment was performed at the beginning of last century in order to ascertain the amount of pressure by means of which the sap is forced from the cut surface of the vine and other stems. A vine stem without branches and about the thickness of one’s finger was cut across in the spring at a height of about 80 cms. above the ground, and on the root-stock was fixed a glass tube with a double bend, in such a way that one end fitted exactly over the cut surface of the stump, and the tube was then filled with mercury. By the pressure of the sap which welled from the cut surface the mercury was forced up the tube, and in a few days it actually reached a height of 856 mm. The weight of a column of mercury 760 mm. high is equal to that of a column of air as high as the atmosphere of the earth, or of a column of water about 103 m. high, and consequently the pressure by which the sap is forced out of the vine is considerably greater than the weight of one atmosphere, or of a column of water of the height mentioned. From these data it has been estimated that the sap can be raised through 11:6 m. by the pressure originating in the absorbent cells of the root. The pressure is naturally greatest in the lower portions of a stem, and gradually diminishes towards the higher regions; the ascending current of sap to which it gives rise is also not uniform, but shows daily, and even hourly, fluctuations. Moreover, the quantity of TRANSPIRATION. 273 sap exuded, neglecting these said fluctuations, is greatest soon after the stem is cut, and then becomes gradually less until finally the outflow ceases entirely with the death of the stump. The magnitude of the pressure, and the quantity of the sap forced up by the absorptive power of the cells, vary with the circumstances of the plants considered. The pressure appears to be greatest in species of vine, and in the vine stem, as already remarked, it will support the weight of a column of mercury 856 mm. high. In the stem of the Foxglove it equals the pressure of a column of mercury 461 mm. high; in the stem of the nettle the column is 354 mm.; in the poppy stem 212 mm.; in the stem of a bean 159 mm.; and in the trunk of the White Mulberry tree 12 mm. high. In the majority of herbaceous plants this pressure is quite sufficient to drive the sap from the root-tips up to the leaves and top of the stem; but this is not the case with leafy trees and pines, with palms and creeping and climbing plants. Although watery fluid can be raised according to the above calculation to a height of 11°6 m. by root-pressure, there is still a great distance between this level and the leaves of such trees and climbing plants, which may be as much as 160 m. high; and the question which presents itself is this: By what means is the sap carried to the higher regions from this level to which it is raised by root-pressure? It may be supposed that cells are present at the various heights in the stem to which the water is driven, which act in a manner similar to those of the root; we. cells which actively absorb, whose cell-wall on one side only slightly resists filtra- tion, and which therefore are able to force up the sap a little higher. The results of the following experiments seem to support such a supposition. If a piece of a branch be cut from the middle portion of a tree, and the lower end be peeled and placed in water, sap will flow out from the upper cut surface with considerable force. The same thing occurs when a leafy branch is placed in water so that its leaves are submerged, while the upper cut piece of the branch projects a good way out of the water. In this case the cells of the leaves must function as the absorptive cells. However, even if, as is probable, parenchymatous cells are to be found at all levels of the plant stem behaving exactly like the absorptive cells of the root, this arrangement would scarcely suffice in all cases to carry the sap to its destination. Atmospheric pressure as well as the rarefaction of the air observed in the vessels of the stem during the summer have been made use of in explaining the upward current of the sap, and this réle may actually belong to these factors; but all these mechanical powers are quite overshadowed by that one which has been termed by botanists “ Transpiration”. TRANSPIRATION. By transpiration of plants we mean the act of giving off aqueous vapour to the surrounding air—briefly and in plain terms, the perspiring of plants. Vapour escapes from the cells of the plant which are in contact with the air, the formation of these cells being specially adapted to the process of evaporation, just as i is given VoL. I. 274 TRANSPIRATION. off from moist inorganic bodies and exposed liquids. Of the materials which are held in solution in the sap of plants, only those which have the property of passing from the fluid to the gaseous condition, at the same temperature which transforms water into water-vapour, can evaporate with this fluid. All the others remain behind, and the natural consequence is that the sap in the transpiring cells becomes more concentrated. If water, which contains in solution extremely small quantities of sugar, organic acids, nitric, sulphuric and phosphoric acids, and salts of potassium, calcium, and iron, be set to evaporate slowly in a shallow dish, it will gradually come about that only a thin layer of fluid is left on the bottom of the dish; but this now is seen to consist of a very concentrated solution of the substances mentioned; we. of the sugar, organic acids, and the various salts. It has also all the properties of such a concentrated solution, 7.¢. it has the power of sucking in water in the liquid condition from its surroundings. In the same way the contents of a cell in contact with the air become more concentrated by evaporation, and thus obtain the power of abstracting water from the environment of the cell, that is to say, of suck- ing it up. ‘If two adjacent cells contain sap of the same density, whilst only one of them has the power of exhaling water, the condition of equilibrium between them will be destroyed. ' However, the balance naturally tends to be restored, and the cell whose sap has become more concentrated by the evaporation of water, takes up watery fluid from the neighbouring cell. Now picture a chain of cells containing abundance of sap connected with one another by cell-walls through which fluid can filter, and let them be so arranged that only the uppermost member of the chain is in contact with the atmospheric air. The sap of this uppermost cell having become concentrated by evaporation will first of all exert a suction on the cell immediately below. As fluid is withdrawn from this second cell, its sap also undergoes concen- tration, and in consequence produces suction on the third cell, the third in like manner on the fourth, the fourth on the fifth, &., passing from above downwards. In this way innumerable compensating currents are set up between the adjoining cells, which, however, never lead to true equilibrium as long as evaporation con- tinues in the cell in contact with the air, but combine together to form a single ascending stream. Such a current actually exists in all living plants which evaporate from the portions above the ground and in contact with the air, while their lower extremities are embedded in a damp nutritious soil. This has been termed the Transpiration Current. Its source is the fluid which has been drawn from the earth by the absorptive cells and brought within the sphere of the living cells of the plant; we may retain for this fluid the old and very appropriate name “crude” or “raw sap”. Its direction and destination are determined by the position of the evaporating cells, and its path is through the wood, which in tree-trunks is inserted as a huge layer between the bark and the pith; in lesser stems it passes through the bundles and strands of woody cells and vessels which traverse them, being connected, deep under the ground, by groups of parenchymatous cells, with the absorptive cells of the young rootlets, or with the hyphe of the mycelial mantle, which replace the TRANSPIRATION. \h ai [tit i \ ‘ 4 hy | 276 TRANSPIRATION. absorptive cells (beech, &.). These bundles pass above into the leaves, forming there the “veins” of the leaf-blade, which spread out into an extremely fine network of tiny strands, and terminate quite close to the evaporating cells on the surface. That the wood actually forms the conducting tissue of the transpiration current is satis- factorily demonstrated by the existence of old trees whose trunks have long been hollow, whose pith is disintegrated and fallen away, and which have also been de- prived of bark around their base. In the olive plantations at Lake Garda, one of which is reproduced in figure 60, many trees are to be seen in which the lower part of the trunk is not only hollow and without bark, but is also often tunnelled and split, so that the upper part of the tree looks as if it were raised on stilts. The only communication between the soil and the upper part of the tree is by means of these props, which are continuous with the roots’ below and are composed entirely of woody cells and vessels. And yet these olive-trees are still vigorous, putting out new branches and leaves every year, and blossoming and producing fruit; and they derive their necessary food from the ground by supplies which have no other upward path than the wood of these props. Moreover, by repeated experiments it has been proved that the bundles of woody cells and vessels which are united together into a woody cylinder, inserted between the pith and the cortex in the trunks and stems of trees and shrubs, serve as con- ductors of the transpiration current. Ifa ring of cortex is removed from the stem of a leafy plant, whose leaves are transpiring in dry air, and are supplied with water from below by the transpiration current, this flow of sap to the leaves will not be interrupted, and the leaves remain firm and tense. But as soon as a piece of the wood is removed or the above-mentioned strands are cut through, even though the cortex be left entire, the flow to the leaves stops immediately, and they become flaccid and hang down in a withered condition. The cellular formations of the wood and strands, which function as the con- ductors of the crude nutritive sap to the leaves, are—as already mentioned—wood- cells and wood-vessels. Formerly the idea was held that these structures served for the passage of air, and it was believed that they were analogous to the respiratory organs—the so-called tracheze—of insects; therefore these wood-vessels were also ealled “trachese”, and the wood-cells “tracheides”. The wood-cells are elongated chambers, on an average 1 mm. long and 0:05-0°1 mm. broad, and their walls are unequally thickened, either by reticulate or annular bands, or spiral threads project- ing slightly from the inner wall into the lumen, or by so-called bordered pits, which are represented in fig. 107 and fig. 10°. The wood-vessels are tubular, and very long in proportion to their width, which is never more than a fraction of a millimetre; they extend uninterruptedly through stalks, branches, leaves, perhaps even through the entire plant from the root-tip to the crown. They are composed of rows of cells whose separation walls have been broken down. The walls of the wood-vessels exhibit similar thickenings to those of the wood-cells or tracheides. When the chambers and tubes of the wood, with their bordered pits and projecting bands, are fully developed, the living protoplasm which carried on the building forsakes the TRANSPIRATION. Q77 scenes of its activity, and consequently in fully formed wood-cells and vessels living protoplasmic contents are wanting. They must be regarded in a certain sense as dead structures, for they have no further power of growth, and the reciprocal pressure of wall and contents observable in absorptive cells and other cell-cavities occupied by living protoplasm, which has been termed “twrgescence”, is never seen in them. In the walls of the wood-cells as well as of the vessels, woody material (Lignin) is deposited. It appears to be in consequence of this that they are much less capable of swelling than are cell-walls which consist chiefly of cellulose. The amount of sap which presses its way in between the groups of molecules of the lignified walls, and with which these walls are saturated, is also comparatively very small. On the other hand, of course, this imbibed sap is conducted much more quickly through the lignified walls of the cell chambers and tubes than through non- lignified walls. More fluid is carried up by the intermolecular stream through the woody walls of the cells and vessels than by the ascension of the raw nutritive sap | in the interior of the wood-cells and tubes. If no evaporation is going on from the leaves, or if this is only very slight, the vessels and cells become filled with sap. As soon as transpiration becomes active, part of the sap is taken up, and if fresh supplies do not arrive quickly enough a limited amount of air can get in temporarily, which of course must be in a very rarefied condition on account of the obstacles which oppose its entrance. The passage of the sap is quicker through the non- septate vessels than through the much shorter woody cells. The sap on its way through the latter, to the transpiring leaves, must filter through innumerable trans- verse walls. This filtration will of course be materially helped by the bordered pits with which the wood-cells are so regularly provided; for the extremely delicate membrane which is stretched between the two cavities of such an apparatus at any rate allows the sap to pass through very easily. The bordered pits are exactly like clack-valves, and they also appear to regulate the sap-stream, though the way in which they do this is not yet completely understood. The nearer the path of the raw sap approaches to the spots in which evaporation is being carried on, the greater is the number of cells in the sap-conducting strands, while the vessels in the same become fewer and fewer. The termination of the whole sap-conducting apparatus consists entirely of cells whose walls are stiffened by spiral bands on the inside. Between this termination and the transpiring cells some parenchymatous cells with living protoplasmic cell-contents are interposed, whereas, it must again be insisted, the tubes and chambers composing the sap-conducting apparatus have no living protoplasm in their interior. The whole mechanism for the transmission of the raw nutritive sap may be con- sidered as a system of tubes and chambers provided with clack-valves, into which the fluid taken up by the absorbent root-cells is forced, and through which it is con- ducted to the transpiring cells of the green leaves or of the green cortex, which takes the place of the green leaves in leafless branches. This does not exclude the activity of cells at certain levels, as it were at intermediate stages of the road traversed by 278 TRANSPIRATION. the current, which have the power of invigorating the stream, of hastening it if necessary, and also of lessening it under certain circumstances. Also it is arranged that in case of need fluid nourishment in the higher regions of the stem may reach the leaves by side paths. The cells which by means of the exhalation of aqueous vapour into the atmos- phere originates the transpiration-current are, as already mentioned, not far from the terminations of the sap-conducting apparatus. In some mosses they are freely ex- posed to the air. In the Polytrichacez and several other mosses (Barbula aloides, ambigua, rigida) they form short chains of cells like strings of pearls, or bands projecting from the grooved concave upper surface of the tiny leaves (see fig. 61 ”). Again, among the liverworts are forms, e.g. Marchantia polymorpha, which contain large characteristic air-chambers in the body of their green leaf-like thallus (fig. 617). On the fioor of this chamber are green cells which are so grouped together Fig. 61.—Transpiring Cells. 1 Vertical section through an air-chamber of the Liverwort Marchantia polymorpha; x300. 2 Vertical section through a leaf of the Moss Barbula aloides; x 380. as to remind one of the shape of the Prickly Pear (Opuntia). These green cells are thin-walled, and it is from them that water is evaporated. They are not quite freely exposed, like those of the mosses mentioned above, since the roof of the chamber, composed of transparent cells, is extended over them; a chimney-shaped passage, however, is left open through the roof of each chamber by which the water- vapour given off from the opuntia-like cells can escape. These Marchantias furnish a transitional form between the freely exposed transpiring cells on the upper surface of the leaf of the moss and those of flowering plants. In flowering plants the transpiring cells are situated as a rule in the interior of the green leaves, and also in the green cortex of leafless branches, forming a part of that green tissue which has been termed chlorenchyma, or when in the leaves, mesophyll. Leaves may be described as consisting of cells filled with leaf-green, or chloro- phyll, placed closely together and joined into layers above one another so as to form a soft mass of tissue containing abundance of sap; this green tissue pierced by the branched water-conducting strands whose ultimate divisions terminate in the tissue mass; the whole surrounded and shut in by a firm cuticle which is perforated in many places by stomata. Cellular passages are also regularly arranged for the purpose of conducting away the organic materials manufactured in the green cells, whilst groups of cells for the support of the whole, serving as beams, strengthening props, and the like, are placed at definite points. TRANSPIRATION. 279 In most thin membraneous leaves the upper and under sides are differently constructed, and the difference is not confined only to the cuticle, but is also plainly recognizable in the green tissue. The green cells below the epidermis on the upper side of the leaf have the form of prisms, cylinders, or short tubes, and are arranged very regularly in ranks and files. In the leaves of plants belonging to the lily tribe, they lie with their long axes parallel to the surface; but in most other plants these cylindrical cells have their smaller side directed to the surface, and stand side by side like palisades, with only very narrow air-passages between them. Below these palisade-cells, and bordering on the epidermis of the under side of the leaf, is another stratum of cells of a much looser texture (see fig. 621). The cells of this under layer are not so crammed with chlorophyll, and therefore appear a lighter Fig. 62.—Spongy Tissue. 1 Vertical section through leaf of Franciscea eximia. %Spongy tissue in leaf of Daphne Laureola.—The epidermis and palisade cells of the upper side of the leaf are removed. The epidermis of the under side of the leaf, with its stomata, can be seen through the spaces in the spongy tissue; x 320. green than the palisade-cells. In shape they are elliptical, rounded, angular, sinuous, or generally very irregular; usually they possess protuberances which project in various directions, and they are so arranged that the outgrowths of adjoining cells come into contact with one another. It looks as if the neighbouring cells were stretching out their arms and extending their hands to one another, and consequently these cells have been called “ many-armed cells”. When several adjoining stellate cells are connected together in the manner just described so as to form a tissue, lacune and passages are seen in the tissue, which are broken through by the joined arms of neighbouring cells as if by pillars, couplings, and bridges. The whole tissue has the loose perforated appearance of a bath sponge, and is called accordingly spongy tissue, or spongy parenchyma, (see fig. 62”). This spongy tissue is the proper place for transpiration. Nowhere else in the plant are the conditions governing this process so well fulfilled as just here. The surfaces of the cells are rendered large in proportion to their size by their out- growths; and they impinge as far as possible on the larger or smaller lacunae, gaps, and passages filled with air, which all communicate with one another, thus constituting an unmistakable ventilating system. Since the spongy parenchyma in the leaves described does not lie freely exposed, 280 TRANSPIRATION. but is shut off from the atmosphere by a firm cuticle through which water-vapour can only penetrate with great difficulty, the aqueous vapour which is exhaled by the branched and other cells of this parenchyma would saturate the lacune, and further evaporation would be thereby prevented. There must, therefore, be a direct communication with the outer air surrounding the leaf; the epidermis of the leaf must possess apertures through which the water-vapour can escape. The already repeatedly mentioned stomata are to be looked upon as such apertures. Stomata arise in this way; in a particular epidermal cell a partition wall first of all divides it into two cells. This cell-wall splits, and the cleft widens, forming a short canal which pierces the epidermis, and constitutes a connection between the outer air and the air-containing lacune in the interior of the leaf. This short canal is called the pore of the stoma, and the two cells which border it are termed guard cells. These two cells regulate the outrush of aqueous vapour, 1.e. of that vapour which has been excreted by the thin-walled cells of the spongy parenchyma, and passed into the adjoining passages in the interior of the leaf. That cavity which is placed immediately beneath the narrow, short canal of the stoma, and is connected by passages with other spaces further within the green tissue of the leaf, is termed the respiratory cavity. The number of the stomata or transpiration-pores which pierce the epidermis of the leaf varies very considerably. In the leaves of cabbages (Brassica oleracea) in 1 sq. mm. of the upper surface there are nearly 400, and on the under side over 700. In the leaves of the olive-tree, on the same extent of surface of the under side, over 600. Succulent plants have remarkably few stomata. On 1 sq. mm. of the leaves of the House-leek (Sempervivum tectorum) and of the yellow Stone-crop (Sedum acre) only 10-20 are to be met with. In the majority of cases, on a similar extent of surface, between 200 and 800 stomata are to be found. The under side of an oak leaf, 50 sq. cms. in area, showed over two million stomata. They are in most cases scattered fairly uniformly over the surface of the leaf; on the leaves of grasses and pines, as well as on the green stalks of the horsetails, they form straight regular rows which run longitudinally; on the leaves of some species of saxifrage (Saxifraga sarmentosa, japonica, &ec.) they appear crowded together in small isolated groups; and on the leaves of the Begonia they are generally to be seen side by side in pairs. Obviously they are principally developed just where the epidermis overlies spongy parenchyma, and as in the majority of cases this parenchyma is situated towards the under side of the leaf, the greater number of stomata are to be found on this side. In most flat membraneous leaves, which have one side directed towards the sky and one towards the earth, stomata are entirely wanting on the upper surface, being restricted to the under side. An exception to this is afforded by the orbicular flat leaves which float on the surface of water, e.g. those of the floating Pond-weed (Potamogeton natans), of the Frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-rane), and of the water-lilies (Vymphea, Nuphar, Victoria). These are covered with stomata on the upper side, while on the lower side, which is in contact with the water, stomata are Ansa TRANSPIRATION. 281 entirely absent. On the upright leaves of flags, asphodels, amaryllis, and various other bulbous plants, and on the vertical leaf-like structures (phyllodes) of the Australian acacias, as well as on some of the needle-like leaves of conifers, the stomata occur on both sides in almost equal number. In the mimosas and various other plants, having, in common with the mimosas, the characteristic faculty of altering the position of their leaflets when stimulated externally, numerous stomata are found on both sides of the leaf. : Most stomata are elliptical when open; rarely circular or linear. The length of stomates varies between 0:02 and 0:08 mm., the breadth between 0:01 and 0:08 mm. Pines, orchids, lilies, and grasses have the largest stomata; water-lilies, olives, and some fig-trees, the smallest. The stomata in the epidermis, the passages and cavities below them into which the thin-walled cells of the green tissue evaporate water, and the strands through which the sap is conducted from the roots to the green tissue, all work in connec- tion with one another like the various parts of a machine. Each portion of the mechanism helps and depends upon the others, the immediate result of the common work being always the elevation of that nutritive fluid which is brought by the absorptive roots into the plant. In the main, therefore, the result obtained by transpiration is the same as that which root-pressure aims at, and it might be thought (taking for granted the truth of the above statement) that either root- pressure or transpiration is superfluous. Or perhaps transpiration and root-pressure work in a complementary manner together. Perhaps the conditions between the two forces are so arranged that the fluid taken in by the absorptive cells from the nutritive soil is forced up to a certain level by root-pressure, and from thence is promoted to still higher levels by means of transpiration? This would suggest a comparison with the raising of water from a spring situated in a valley-basin sur- rounded and shut in by mountains. In the depth of the basin exists underground water which is fed by the subterranean supply coming from the mountains. Ac- cording to the pressure of this supply; the water in the lower earth-strata of the basin rises to a certain height. This pressure is not strong enough, however, to drive the water to the surface of the basin, and in order that it may reach this, it is necessary to employ a pump, which will reach down to that stratum of earth which is saturated by the underground water. But the level of this water differs in summer and winter. It depends also upon the amount of rainfall on the neighbouring mountains, which may undergo great fluctuations. In some years the underground water in the spring has almost risen to the upper opening; at other times only the deepest strata of the valley-basin contain water. The pump, by which the water has to be raised, must be constructed with all these possibilities in view, and must be so regulated that the absorbent action is felt as far down as the deepest position which the underground water is known to take. Transpiration behaves in like manner in the portions of a plant above ground, and its action on the fluid food taken in by the roots may be compared with that of a suction-pump. It would be a quite inadequate arrangement if the sucking action 282 TRANSPIRATION, produced by transpiration could only reach down to the highest level attained by the water which has been forced up by root-pressure, and precautions must be taken that, in case of the abatement of the root-pressure, water would be raised from the lower positions up to the transpiring cells, and that under certain condi- tions the action of transpiration should reach even to the absorbent cells at the root-tips. It has been shown by experiments that plants with large leaves lose in the summer more water by transpiration than is forced up into the stem by root- pressure, and yet the leaves do not become faded. The conclusion drawn from this is that at certain times the effect of transpiration makes itself felt down from the leaves through the stem as far as the root-tips. It has also been shown that in many plants, just when the most active evaporation is taking place in the leaves, none, or only very little sap is forced into the stem by root-pressure. If the stem of a vine be cut across in the height of summer, when the green leaves have been unfolded some time and are transpiring actively, no “tears” are seen on the cut surface of the stump, no drops are pressed out. The vessels contain rarefied air but no sap, and water can be sucked through the stump by the vessels even in the direction of the root. Let us pause here in order to get a clear idea of the relations between transpira- tion and root-pressure. Given the conditions for an abundant evaporation from the aérial portions of a plant—ie. a fairly dry air, water, and an appropriate development of transpiring surface—then the action of root-pressure is diminished, while that of transpiration is increased, and governs the whole of the movement of the sap. If, on the other hand, the conditions for evaporation from the aérial por- tions of the plant are unfavourable—if the air is very damp, or if the branches of the plant are not yet in leaf—then root-pressure comes into play, and, supported by cells with absorbent contents which occur in the higher regions of the plant, can force up the sap to the tops of trees and to the highest shoots of vine-branches which remain leafless all the winter. So far, therefore, root-pressure can supersede and replace transpiration, a fact of great importance in places where the air is sometimes very damp, and in countries where the trees and lianes shed their leaves in autumn; at the commencement of the next period of vegetation they have not yet put out their new foliage, and therefore do not possess a sufficiently large tran- spiring surface. It is very probable that in the autumn, when preparing for the winter, certain cells in trees and lianes provide themselves with materials by means of which in the coming spring they may exercise a very strong sucking action. This would also partly explain how it comes about that in the spring there is such a strong upward current of sap in the still leafless trees and vine branches, and that the water is conducted up even to the topmost shoots of lianes 100 metres long, which have shed all their leaves in the previous autumn. A perfect substitute for transpiration in the form of the pressure produced by the absorbent cells is seen in moulds, in the already-mentioned dry-rot fungus, and generally in leafless cryptogams: possibly also in those orchids possessing neither green leaves nor stomata, and in other humus plants (saprophytes) such as the oe TRANSPIRATION, 283 Monotropa, mentioned earlier on, which stands in such a peculiar relation to the mycelium of fungi. On the other hand, in most green flowering plants which bear leaves, a complete replacement of transpiration, continuing for a long time, is not an advantage. Experience has shown that green leafy plants, when kept for a long while in an atmosphere saturated with vapour, cease to grow and become unhealthy; they lose their leaves, and at length succumb altogether. This happens even if the amount of light, the temperature of the atmosphere and of the earth, the composi- tion and humidity of the soil, in short, if all the other conditions of life are the most favourable that can be imagined for the plants in question. It follows from this that it is not immaterial to leafy plants how the sap reaches the leaves, whether it is drawn up by transpiration, or forced up by root-pressure. If the leaf transpires, water, in the form of vapour only, is given off to the atmosphere; all the materials which have been brought in solution from below to the leaves remain behind in the cells of the leaf. If, on the other hand, fluid water is pressed from the pores of the leaves by root-pressure, salts, sugar, and other compounds are always to be found in the exuded drops, having passed through the cell-wall in solution in the water. When it is a question of secreting sugar as a means of alluring insects, or salts for a protective covering, such an exudation cannot advantageously be given up, but is on the contrary a fundamental part of the economy of the whole plant. If this is not the case, and if materials which have a part to perform in the leaf by the formation of organic substances are exuded with the drops of water, and the drops falling from the surface of the plant trickle to the ground, there is loss of material, which does not contribute to the advantage, but rather to the detriment, of the organism. The signification of transpiration may be explained in this way. By transpira- tion not only is water brought from below to the more highly situated parts of the plant, but nutritive salts in solution are also conducted to the green tissue of those branches and leaves which are exposed to light and air. The greater part of the ascended water is only used as a medium for the transmission of mineral salts, which have been taken from the soil into the plant. When it has reached the leaves, most of the water evaporates into the atmosphere, while the salts conducted by it into the green tissue remain behind, in order to take part in the chemical changes by which organic compounds are manufactured out of the raw materials. These salts are indispensable here, and transpiration is therefore also necessary in a corresponding degree. Without transpiration, it would be impossible that plants, whose green branches and leaves are surrounded by air, or that trees, which rank before all other plants on account of their superior size, could be properly nourished; consequently transpiration must be regarded as one of the most important life- processes of terrestrial plants. 284 MEANS OF ACCELERATING TRANSPIRATION. 2. REGULATION OF TRANSPIRATION. Means of accelerating transpiration.—Maintenance of a free passage for aqueous vapour. MEANS OF ACCELERATING TRANSPIRATION. Aquatic plants do not transpire; therefore they do not require either vascular bundles or stomata. Neither trees nor shrubs grow under water, and even the largest Floridee and the most gigantic sea-wracks have no wood nor stomata. These structures are on the other hand very important for land plants, and in these they are developed in extraordinary variety. When one considers how much the humidity and temperature of the air, those very conditions which influence the transpiration of plants, are continually changing, this diversity is not really surprising. What endless series of gradations there are between the damp air of a tropical estuary, and the arid wastes in the interior of large continents! What varieties of temperature in the different zones and regions of the earth, and in the changing seasons; what differences, even in a narrow space in a single small valley, between the conditions of moisture of the air and ground in the depths of a shady glen, and on the sunny, rocky slopes! In the one place the air is so saturated with water-vapour that even evaporation cannot take place from exposed pieces of water, much less then from plants; in the other it is so dry and the sun is so strong that plants can hardly suck up enough from the ground to compensate for the water evaporated from their surface. In the former case contrivances must be devised which will promote transpiration as much as possible; in the latter, however, it is important that too much evaporation, which would cause the drying up and death of the plant, should be prevented. One of the most important ways of increasing transpiration consists in the development of many cells whose surface is in contact to the greatest possible extent with the atmospheric air, and which are so organized that water in the form of vapour can be exhaled from them. Further, it is of importance that the access of air to these cells is not rendered difficult, and that as great a portion as possible of these cell-groups, which help in transpiration, are reached by the rays of the sun. It is only in the delicate-leaved mosses, which have no stomata, that the whole of the cells of a leaf, in contact with the air, give off unlimited water, in the form of vapour, directly to the atmosphere. In plants possessing leaves provided with stomata, the outer walls of the epidermal cells, which are directly in contact with the air, are almost always rather thicker than the inner and side walls; moreover, the outer wall is overlaid by the already repeatedly mentioned covering, termed “cuticle”, through which water-vapour can pass only with difficulty. In tropical ferns, especially in the tree-ferns, which grow in narrow wind-sheltered ravines, traversed by streams of water, and which spread out their fronds in the still, damp, warm air, the outer walls are so thin and delicate, and are covered by a cuticle of MEANS OF ACCELERATING TRANSPIRATION. 285 such tenuity, that if the humidity of the air sinks only a few degrees below satura- tion point, or if a transient sunbeam enters the ravine even for a short time, they immediately give off water-vapour. Apart from such cases, the exhalation of water- -vapour from the superficial cells is scarcely worth noticing; it is almost entirely restricted to the cells of the spongy parenchyma. Here are to be found, indeed, very striking arrangements, which must be regarded as contrivances for increasing transpiration. First of all, where transpiration is to be accelerated, the green, spongy tissue is very strongly developed, the air-containing lacunew and passages, which penetrate the net-work of branched cells like a maze, are enlarged and numerous, and the collective free surface of all the air-bordered cells in the interior of the leaf has a much greater extent than the mere outer surface of the epidermis. In the leaves of many tropical plants which are always surrounded by damp warm air, eg. in those of the Brazilian Franciscea eximia, of which a section is represented in fig. 621, almost the entire thickness is made up of loose wide-meshed spongy parenchyma, and it is evident that water will be exhaled from the cells of this tissue as soon as the temperature of the leaf is raised even to the extent of a few degrees above that of the moist surrounding air by the sunbeams falling upon it. In many such plants which urgently require a help to transpiration on account of their situation, the cavities of the spongy parenchyma are extraordinarily enlarged and widened at certain points where the greatest number of stomata are develdped. The difference in appearance between such places and other parts of the leaf having dense spongy parenchyma can indeed be recognized by the unaided vision. In such a leaf looked at from above, the large-meshed portions of the spongy parenchyma appear as lighter spots in the dark-green grounding; the leaf is flecked and marked with white. This is not only the case with many plants of damp, tropical forests, but also in those of temperate zones, such as species of the genus Cyclamen, Galeobdolon lutewm, the Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis), and frequently also in Hepatica triloba, if they grow in very shady places on the damp ground of a forest. It must, of course, not be forgotten that all the white spots and markings of green leaves, which have been named collectively “variegations”, are not due to this cause. In those nettle-like plants, known as Behmerias, the white spots on the central part of the leaf lamina are caused by peculiar groups of crystals in the epidermal cells, the so-called cystoliths, which reflect the light; in some Piperacess they are due to groups of epidermal cells which are filled with air, and below which the palisade cells are absent; in other plants, again, they may be caused by the formation of aqueous tissue, a structure which will be discussed later. In many of those plants with variegated leaves, which are so extensively cultivated for purposes of: decoration, the variegation is not normal, but must be considered as pathological, and is in no way connected with transpiration. Since, as we know by experience, transpiration of green leaves is increased by light and warmth, it is evidently an advantage for all those plants to which only a restricted number of sunbeams can obtain access, if their leaf-blades are very large 286 MEANS OF ACCELERATING TRANSPIRATION. and have such a form and position that the small supply of light can be utilized to the full. The resultant action is just the same whether 1000 green cells are only moderately illuminated, or if 500 cells are illuminated by a light twice as strong. If this argument will not apply to all plants, it certainly fully applies to some, and it is a fact that plants growing in damp, shady places are characterized by their comparatively large, thin, delicate leaves. These leaves are also spread out horizontally in such localities; they are smooth and not wrinkled; neither rolled back nor bent up. Suppose we enter a thick wood in the north temperate zone, perhaps in S. Germany. By the side of delicate-leaved ferns grow species of Corydalis (Corydalis fabacea, solida, cava), together with species of Dentaria (D. bulbifera, digitata, enneaphyllos), dog’s mercury (Mercurialis perennis), Isopy- rum thalictroides, bitter vetch (Orobus vernus), woodruff (Asperula odorata), Lunaria rediviva, herb Paris (Paris quadrifolia), cuckoo-pint (Arum maculatum), spurge-laurel (Daphne Mezerewm), and many other species belonging to very different families, but all having the common characteristic of possessing flattened leaves and no covering of hairs. If a brook ripples through the shady wood, growing on its banks will be found the yellow balsam (Impatiens nolitangere), the broad-leaved garlic (Alliwm ursinwm), Streptopus amplewifolius, and the butter-burr (Petasites officinalis), with its huge foliage, all again characterized by their large, smooth, flat leaves. In such places in 8S. Germany are generally to be found the largest leaves. Those of the butter-burr attain to a length of over a metre, and are almost a metre broad. The fronds of the common bracken-fern (Pieris aquilina) are equally large in such situations; and on the ground in damp, shady alder woods, growing in comparatively cold mountain glens, another fern (Poly- podiwm alpestre) is to be met with, whose frond is 14 metres long. But they only possess these extended leaves when growing in the situations described, in the damp air of cool and shady woods. One would expect that under similar conditions outside the wood, the leaves would exhibit a more luxuriant growth, and would attain to a still larger size in consequence of the influence of a higher temperature; but this is not the case. In the drier air and sunshine on the unshaded banks of a rivulet, the leaves of the butter-burr are scarcely half as large as those growing in the neighbouring cold shady glen, from whose dim light the brooklet flows out into the open country; and on sunny ground neither of the two above-named ferns will even approximately reach that size to which they grow when surrounded by the cold, damp air in the depth of the alder wood. This difference in the relative size of the leaves of one and the same species, according as to whether they grow in sunny places in dry air, or in shady spots in damp air, is sometimes carried so far that the whole physiognomy of the plants becomes altered, and they might easily be thought to belong to distinct species. Thus species of Convallaria Polygonatum, growing in shady meadows watered by rivulets, show leaves at least three times as large as those which grow on the rich damp earth on the steep sides of rocks down which water rushes, where they are warmed by the sun all the day. This comparison might be illustrated by MEANS OF ACCELERATING TRANSPIRATION. 287 numerous other plants of the flora of Central Europe, which are sometimes to be found in damp, shady woods, sometimes in sunny fields; but the above examples will suffice to demonstrate the fact that in shady places and damp air, in spite of the smaller amount of heat, and even when the humidity of the soil is less, the leaves will, notwithstanding, have a greater size than in sunny places where they are surrounded by a drier air. An apparent exception is to be found only when these plants are situated above the tree-line in Alpine regions. On the sunny slopes of Monte Baldo, in Venetia, far above the wood-line, Corydalis fabacea grows with the same luxuriance as in the shady forests of the lower hilly regions; and on one place on the Solstein chain, in the Tyrol, at a height of 1800 metres above the sea, dog’s mercury and Galeobdolon lutewm, species of valerian, spurge-laurel, and ferns can be seen rising above the boulders with leaves as large as those growing in the shade of the woods below. But this exception, as stated, is only an apparent one. Where these plants flourish on Alpine heights flooded with light, the air is just as damp as in the depth of the woods 1000 metres lower in the valley. For weeks the mist sways like drapery around the heights, and the air, consequently, is certainly not drier than in the woods down in the valley. Indeed, the fact that plants, which one is accustomed to see inhabiting the shady woods in the depth of the valley, grow in Alpine regions on unshaded places with leaves of the same size and shape as before, is a proof that: the large size of their leaves in the dark woods of these lower places is not due to the absence of light, but to the very moist condition of the air which prevails there. Plants, whether in the shade of the forests, or on the illuminated heights of the mountains, endeavour to compensate for the detrimental influence of the greater humidity of the air by the formation of an extensive transpiring surface. So far the increase of leaf surface may be considered absolutely as a means of helping transpiration. This method of increasing transpiration comes into action in the tropics in a much more striking way than even in the temperate zones. Especially in the most characteristic plant-structures of the tropics may it be observed how intimately the size of the leaves corresponds to the conditions of moisture of the air, and how it is that palms develop the largest leaves just in those districts where, in consequence of the air being saturated with aqueous vapour, plants can only transpire with difficulty. In the dampest parts of Ceylon grows the gigantic Corypha wmbraculifera. A copy of a drawing of this tree, sketched on the spot by Ransonnet, is given in fig. 63. It towers above the tops of all other plants, and its leaf-blades are from 7 to 8 metres long, and 5 to 6 metres broad. In similar situations in Brazil the palm Raphia tedigera spreads out its fronds like gigantic feathers. The petiole of this leaf alone is 4 to 5 metres long, and the green feather-like blade is from 19 to 22 metres long and 12 metres broad—the greatest extent which has hitherto been observed in any leaf. Others palms besides these giants, whose fronds wave all the year round in a damp atmosphere, are but little inferior to them. Under one leaf of the Talipot ten persons can easily find room and shelter, and if the pinnate leaves of the Sago-palm be imagined 288 MEANS OF ACCELERATING TRANSPIRATION. propped up against the houses in the streets of our towns, their tops would reach to the second story, and it would be possible to climb up to the windows by them as if by the rungs of a ladder. Many of these palm leaves if placed in an upright position would be equal in height to our forest trees. In all these leaves the epidermis is only slightly thickened, the spongy parenchyma is well developed, stomata are present in large numbers, and the surfaces of the leaves are so directed towards the incident sunbeams that they are abundantly illumined and warmed throughout. The leaves become decidedly heated by the sun’s rays, and thus, even in the saturated air of the tropics, the necessary amount of transpiration becomes possible. Arrangements similar to those of the palms may be observed in the Aroids and Bananas. ‘These also develop their most extended leaves in the saturated or almost saturated atmosphere on the banks of still or flowing water, and in the moist heavy air of tropical primeval forests. It is obvious that means of increasing transpiration are required in those water- plants whose roots are in the wet mud at the bottom of lakes and ponds, whose stems and leaf-stalks are directly surrounded by water, and whose leaf-blades float on the surface of the water, as for example the water-lilies (Vymphea, Victoria), the Frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranc), and the Nymphea-like Villarsia (V. nymphoides). The blade of the leaf is disc-shaped in all these plants, and the discs lie side by side flat on the surface of the water. Frequently large areas of lakes and ponds are covered with the floating leaves of these plants. The whole of the upper side of such a leaf can receive the rays of the sun, and the leaf is thus warmed and illuminated throughout. The under side of the leaf is coloured violet by a pigment called anthocyanin, which we will consider more in detail later, and of which it need only be mentioned now that it changes light into heat, and thereby materially helps'to warm the leaves. The.aqueous vapour which is in consequence developed cannot escape below from the large air-spaces which permeate the leaf, because thé under side, which floats on and is wetted by the water, possesses no stomata. The upper side is so richly furnished with stomata that on 1 sq. mm. 460 are to be seen, and on a single water-lily leaf about 2} sq. dms. in area, about 114 millions. This upper side alone provides a means of exit, and it is therefore important that the passage should not be obstructed at the time of transpiration. If the rain should fall unre- strainedly on the upper side of the floating leaves, the collected rain-water might remain there for a long time, even while the sunbeams breaking through the clouds after the shower are warming the floating leaves and inciting them to transpire. In order to avoid this an arrangement is made by which it is rendered an impossibility to wet the upper side of the floating leaves. The falling rain is formed into round drops on reaching them, and does not spread over the leaf-surface so as to wet it. But in order that the drops should not remain long on the leaves in many of these forms, such as in the widely distributed water-lily (Nymphwa alba),the leaf, where it joins the stalk, is somewhat. raised, and the edges are bent a little up and down in an undulating manner. This gives rise to very shallow depressions MEANS OF ACCELERATING TRANSPIRATION. 289 round the edge of the disc, on account of which the drops of water roll down from the middle of the leaf to the edge on the slightest rocking movement, and there coalesce with the water on which the leaves float, This puckering soe of the margin of the leaf is attended in the water-lilies by a phenomenon which, although not directly asso- ciated with the matter in hand, is . so full of interest ‘that it cannot be passed ‘ without notice. If we take a boat in the bright sunshine at mid- day, and float over the calm inlet of a lake, whose surface is overspread with the leavesof water- lilies, and if the water is clear to the bottom, - we shall see the sha- dows of the leaves* which float on the surface sketched out on the ground below. But we can scarcely believe our eyes—these do not look like the shadows of the leaves of water- Fig. 63.—Corypha umbraculifera of Ceylon (after Ransonnet). hi 4 Assi ee lilies, but rather of the fronds of huge fan-palms. From a dark central portion radiate out long dark strips which are separated from each other by as many light bands. The cause of this peculiar form, of shadow is to be found in the undulating margin of the floating leaves. The water of: the lake adheres to the whole of the under surface of the dise as far as the edge, and is drawn up by capillarity to the arched spoTtons VoL. 1. 290 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. of the undulating margin, The sun’s rays are refracted as through a lens by this raised water, and so a light stripe corresponding to each convex division of the curved margin is formed on the bed of the lake, and a dark stripe corresponding to each concave part. These are arranged in a radiating manner round the dark central portion of the shadow. MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. Special arrangements are met with in all plants which possess stomata, in order that the giving off of aqueous vapour may continue without hindrance. Water falling on the upper side of the leaf, in the form of rain and dew, threatens to cause the greatest obstacle to this free passage should it be able to collect directly in the stomata. The width of an open stomate does not render the entrance of water by capillarity impossible. As long as light and warmth exercise their power, as long as the temperature in the neighbourhood of the spongy parenchyma is higher than that of the surrounding air, and water-vapour in consequence is pro- duced in the spongy tissue and driven out with force from the stomata, such an entrance is indeed inconceivable, It is impossible for aqueous vapour to pass out and at the same time for fluid water to enter by the same passage and through the same gate. But should the leaf become cooled by radiation after sunset, and dew be deposited upon it, or should a cold rain trickle down over the leaves, and the stomata have been unable to close quickly enough, it is quite possible that water might enter, just as it enters a retort (whose narrow mouth dips into water, and whose contents have been vaporized by placing a lamp under them), when the lamp is removed, and the bulb of the retort with its contents becomes cooled. But putting aside the possibility of water thus pressing its way in, this much is certain, that the formation of a layer of water over the cells in the immediate neighbourhood of the stomata would cause great injury to the plants; and this, not only as affecting transpiration, but also the free entrance and exit of gases. Therefore, the im- mediate surroundings of the stomata must be kept open as a path for aqueous vapour, and no water must be allowed to collect and take up a position there. Stomata are much too small to be seen with the naked eye. However, it can be ascertained by a very simple experiment whereabouts, on a leaf or green branch, stomata are to be found. A twig or a leaf is dipped in water, and then withdrawn after a short time and lightly shaken; some spots will be found wet, while other places remain dry. Where water remains and spreads out to form an adhering film, no stomata will be found in the epidermis; but where the twig or leaf is dry, one can be sure of finding them. In 80 per cent of cases experimented upon in this way, only the upper leaf-surface became wetted, while the under side kept dry; in 10 per cent both sides remained dry; and in the other 10 per cent the upper side kept dry, while it was the under side which was wetted, With this corresponds the actual fact that in far the greater number of instances the under side possesses most stomata, while the upper side is free from them. It seems as if MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. 291 this circumstance could be explained thus, that the upper side is usually turned towards the rain, and that the stomata are on this account collected together on the under side, which is sheltered from it. This explanation, however, which at first sight seems so plausible, does not quite correspond to the true state of the case. The consideration of the reasons for believing that it is an advantage for the plant to have the upper side of the leaf free from stomata will indeed come later, but one thing must be noted here,—that the side of the leaf turned towards the ground, which in most cases contains all the stomata, remains anything but dry. Of course the rain-water only reaches the surface of the horizontal leaf-blade when the margin is so formed that the adherent layer of water which wets the surface is drawn over gradually from the upper to the under side, and that is very seldom the case; but the wetting of this surface by mist and dew is all the more important on this account. On taking a stroll through fields and meadows on a dewy morn- ing, as a rule only the upper surfaces of the leaves come into view, and one might easily be led to think that the dew is deposited only on this side. We constantly use the expression that the dew “falls”. Underlying this is the idea that the dew comes down like rain, and that only the upper leaf-surface becomes covered with dewdrops. But one has only to turn the leaf over to convince oneself that the lower surface is likewise bedewed, and on a closer examination it will even be seen that dew is of more importance in connection with the lower than the upper side, because it remains there so much longer. When the sun is already high in the heaven, and the dewdrops have long disappeared from the upper surface, and tran- spiration is in full force, the under side may still be found studded with dewdrops. If in the majority of cases the stomata lie on the under side, and this side is exposed to the danger of being covered with water as much as the upper one, it is evident why contrivances for hindering the access of water to the stomata are to be found much more abundantly on the under than on the upper side of the leaf. The most important of these arrangements are the following:— First the coating of wax. This is either in the form of a granular covering; or as a fine crust which fits closely to the epidermis; or, most commonly, as a continuous thin layer which is easily rubbed off, forming a delicate film popularly known as “bloom”. A group of primulas, belonging to mountainous districts and to the moors of low countries, of which Primula farinosa may be taken as the most widely distributed and best known representative, have a rosette of leaves spreading over the damp ground, and on the lower side of these leaves is a white coat, which under the microscope is seen to consist of a collection of short rods and knobs of a waxy nature. If such a leaf is plucked and. placed in water for a short time, and then withdrawn, the upper side, which is quite free from stomata, will be moistened by a layer of water, while the under side, on which are the stomata protected by the granular coating of wax, remains quite dry. The lower surface of the leaves is covered with a fine closely adherent wax layer, in many of the willows growing in damp misty places near rivers (Salia amygdalina, purpurea, pruinosa), as well as 292 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. in a great number of rushes, bulrushes, and reed-like grasses. If when the dew falls heaviest one roams through a thicket of willows, or across a moor, one may see plenty of drops hanging from the under side of the leaves, but they do not actually wet this surface, and on the slightest movement of the leaves they roll off and fall down. It is, indeed, in consequence of this that one is more likely to get thoroughly wet by walking through meadows and dwarf willows than by an excursion through country overgrown with ordinary herbs. The two white stripes, so well known on the under side of fir leaves, are also formed by a waxy coat, which prevents the stomata below from being wetted. In species of juniper (eg. J. communis, nana, Sabina) the two white stripes occur on the upper side of the leaf, and it is interest- ing to see how the distribution of the stomata again corresponds; for junipers belong to that group of plants whose under leaf-surface is free from stomata, these being present only on the wax-coated region of the upper side of the leaves. Many grasses, to which we shall refer later for other reasons (e.g. Festuca punctoria), only possess stomata on the upper side of the leaf, and again only where the strips of wax are situated. Generally speaking, wax is a protection from moisture, and is most frequently formed when the stomata make their appearance on the upper side of the leaf. The leaves of peas, nasturtiums, woodbine, poppies, fumitory, many pinks, cabbages, woad, and many other cruciferous plants, which have stomata on the upper surface, also produce a covering of wax there. Water poured on the upper surface of a cabbage-leaf rolls off in the form of drops, exactly as it runs off a duck’s back, without wetting the surface. In the fronds of ferns (e.g. Polypodium glaucophyllum and sporodocarpwm), on the upright leaves of Irises (Iris ger- manica, pumila, pallida), as well as on the vertical leaves and leaf-like branches of many Australian acacias and myrtles, and lastly in the erect whiplike, leafless or scantily-leaved papilionaceous plants (Retama, Spartiwm), the stomata are pro- tected from the wet by a coat of wax. The formation of hairs furnishes another barrier to the entrance of water into the stomata. We shall come back again to these structures, which serve so many different purposes in the plant economy, but here only those hairy and felted coverings whose task is to hinder the wetting of the stomata will be considered. Examples of these are furnished by many Malvaceze which grow in marshes and ditches (¢.g. Althoea officinalis), and also by some mulleins (e.g. Verbascum Thapsus, phlomoides), whose leaves are provided with stomata on both surfaces, and with hairy coverings which it is impossible to moisten. In the damp meadows of the valleys of the Lower Alps grows Centaurea Pseudophrygea, whose large leaves, hairy on both sides, are very rough and much wrinkled. The stomata are only situated in the hollows between the ridges. When rain falls, or the leaf becomes bedewed, the water remains in the form of drops on the hairs of the elevated por- tions, and the cells in the hollows are not wetted. In many alpine plants, for example the Hairy Hawkweed (Hieraciwm villoswm), after a fall of rain or dew the long projecting hairs of the leaves are thickly beset with drops of ea none of which can reach the stomata on the epidermis beneath. MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. 293 It should be particularly noticed here that plants with two-coloured leaves, ‘such as those whose upper surfaces are green, smooth, free from stomata and easily wetted, while their under surfaces, covered with gray or white hairs, and rich in stomata, which cannot be wetted, are generally to be found on the banks of rivers and streams. In the open woods which skirt the banks of rivers in the valleys of moun- tainous districts, 7.e. in places where mist rises on summer evenings, and all the twigs, leaves, and stalks are covered with drops of water, the most characteristic plants are the Gray Alder (Alnus incana) and the Gray Willow (Saliva incana), and as undergrowth everywhere the Raspberry—all plants adorned with the two- coloured leaves just described. Leaving the region of woods growing on river banks for the neighbouring meadows, through which ripples fresh water from a spring, and where everything drips with dew from evening until the middle of the following day, we come to the natural home of herbs and shrubs with leaves -green on the upper and white on the under sides. There Fuller's Thistles (Cirsiwm heterophyllwum and canum) grow luxuriantly, and the Meadow-sweet, with its large two-coloured leaves; whilst the whole course of the brook is bordered by the Colt’s-foot (Tussilago Farfara) with leaves which may be considered typical of this group. What a contrast does this present to the lofty vaults of a dense forest, perhaps only a thousand paces away, where on the shady ground little or no dew is formed, and where the leaves which canopy the brown soil are never exposed to a thorough wetting! No parti-coloured leaf is to be found there, no leaves whose upper surface is green and smooth, while the under side is covered with white hairs; and plants which exhibit a thick coating of wax on their under surface, like the Primula farimosa of the moors, are also absent. On the other hand ferns are here, as for example the Hard Fern (Blechnwm Spicant), whose leaves are furnished with stomata which open quite without protection on the tops of projecting undula- tions. This contrast between the leaves of plants in the open marshy country and in the interior of forests is found, not only in the colder territories of the north, but also in tropical districts. Moreover, plants whose leaves are covered with white hairs on the under surface are never to be found under the close leafy roof of huge trees which prevent nocturnal radiation and the formation of dew. Here occur, rather, plants having totally unprotected stomata opening on slightly raised areas of the surface, as for example in Pomaderis phylicifolia, and on the leaves of the Pepper family, e.g. Peperomia arifolia (see fig. 643 and 64 *). A very remarkable contrivance by which stomata are protected from moisture consists in providing the stomata of the upper surface with countless papille and cone-shaped projections; between them, of course, being innumerable hollows and depressions. Falling water-drops roll off such surfaces; the water cannot displace the atmospheric air in the depressions, and therefore the leaves and stems, in so far as their epidermis presents the aforesaid irregularities, appear covered with a thin layer of air. As the stomata are situated in the small hollows, they always remain 294 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. dry, and even if that particular part of the plant is wholly immersed, they do not come into contact with the water. There are two causes for the unevenness of the leaves: first, the outer walls of a portion of the superficial cells may become strongly arched outwards; or secondly, solid peg-like projections may arise from the cuticle, and to these projections the air adheres so firmly that it cannot be displaced even by a considerable pressure of water. This protection of stomata against moisture by papilla-like outgrowths is to be found especially in marsh plants which are exposed to a changing water-level. On the banks of streams and rivers, and Fig. 64.—Stomata. 1 Surface view of a portion of the frond of the fern Nephrodium Filiz-mas. 2 Vertical section through this portion. 3 Surface view of a portion of the leaf of Peperomia arifolia, * Vertical section through this portion; x350. where water welling up from below forms pools and ponds, it may happen that plants are submerged for a week at a time, and then again remain dry for some months, Most of the plants growing in such situations, particularly the sedges (eg. Carex stricta and paludosa), the rushes (e.g. Scirpus lacustris), most of the tall fistular grasses (Glyceria spectabilis, Phalaris arundinacea, Eulalia japonica), the plants which grow with the sedges (eg. Lysimachia thyrsiflora, Polygonum amphibiwm), and many other marsh plants, are all saved from the danger of having their stomata wetted during their submersion by the papilla-like out- growths of some of the epidermal cells, near the stomata, as shown in the figures on next page. Bamboos, and the grasses Arundinaria glawcescens and Phyllostachys bam- MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. 295: busoides, which so much resemble the bamboos, besides some sedges (e.g. Carex pendula), exhibit on the other hand the above-named peg-like projections of the cuticle; these are shown in the section of a bamboo leaf in fig. 667). On plunging such a bamboo leaf in water, a surprising sight presents itself, The upper side, covered by a dark green, smooth, flat epidermis, with no stomata, becomes wet all over, and retains its dark colour and dull appearance; but the under surface, blue- green in colour, and beset with stomata and thousands of cuticular pegs, does not allow the air to be displaced; and this layer of air, spread thin over the surface, glistens under water like polished silver! The leaf may be shaken under water to any extent, and may even be left submerged for a week, but the silvery glisten- ing air-stratum is not dislodged. If such a leaf is now taken out of the water, the upper surface is quite wet, but the under surface is dry, like a hand which has been dipped in mercury and then withdrawn, and not the smallest drop of water ues iz & 1 eee Sy ey ee Wien caess PRE FDO ZS SOD OSS SS see Fig. 65.—Protection of Stomata from Moisture by Papilla-like outgrowths of the Surface. 1 Vertical section through a portion of the leaf of Glyceria spectabilis, 2 Vertical section through a portion of the leaf of Carex paludosa; x200. adheres to it. On placing a vessel of water, in which some bamboo leaves are half immersed, under the receiver of an air-pump, and then pumping out the air, numerous small air-bubbles are at once given off from the submerged portions of the leaves. At length the silvery lustre disappears, and the air between the cuticular pegs is replaced by water. If now the leaves be completely submerged, the silver lustre is only shown on those parts which were not previously immersed, and where water could not replace the exhausted air;—the spaces round the pegs in this region having been again supplied with air on the opening of the stop-cock of the pump in order to submerge the leaves. It may be imagined from this experiment how much the stomata would be damaged by water if the plants mentioned were not protected from moisture by the pegs to which the air adheres so strongly. In many plants which grow in the sunshine, and particularly in those whose foliage is evergreen and only exposed to moisture at the time of the greatest activity of the sap (while later it is exposed for months to dry air), the stomata are to be found surrounded by an embankment, or sunk in special pits and furrows. Even in the leaves of many indigenous plants, which are green in the summer, e.g. those of the Carrot (Daucus Carota), the guard-cells of the stomata are so 296 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. over-arched by the neighbouring epidermal cells that a sort of vestibule is formed in front of the true pore. It can easily be imagined that drops of water which come to’such places are not able to press out the air from this vestibule, and there- fore cannot penetrate to the guard-cells of the stomata. In Hakea florida and Protea mellifera, two Australian shrubs (see fig. 67), similar arrangements are met with, but here the stomata are still more over-arched, so that they are only visible to anyone looking at the surface of the leaf through small holes at the top of the dome. The stomata on the green branches of various species of Ephedra are ‘surrounded by mound-like projections from the cuticle of neighbouring epidermal cells, and are at; the same time somewhat sunken, so that an urn-shaped space is acs cp Cua) Fig. 66. —Protection of Stomata from Moisture by Cuticular Pegs. 1 Vertical section of a Bamboo leaf; x180. 2 Part of the lower portion of the section; x460. 3 Part of the upper portion of the section; x 460. formed above each stoma, from which water cannot dislodge the air. On the leaves of Dryandra floribunda, one of the Proteacese which grows in the thick Australian bush, several stomata occur at the bottom of small pits on the under side of the leaf, and from the side walls of the depression spring hair- like structures which interlace and form a loose felt-work, easily penetrated by gases but not by fluids (fig. 68). The stomata on the leaves of the Oleander (Neriwm Oleander) are similarly situated. These also are at the bottom of deep pits on the lower side of the leaf, and the entrance to them is beset with extremely delicate hair-like structures (see fig. 73°). The oleander fringes the banks of streams in the sunny open country of Southern Europe and the East, and in its natural position it is most exposed to wetting by rain, mist, and dew, just when transpiration is an absolute necessity for it. But even when the leaves are covered on both sides with a layer of moisture, none can force its way into the hair- lined depressions which conceal the stomata, and consequently transpiration is not hindered even in the wettest season of the year. MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. 297 Stomata, which are spread over the green tissue of stems and flattened shoots, are frequently sunk in furrows, channels, and pits, in plants whose greatest activity occurs in the short rainy season, and they are saved from wetting in this position by the most varied contrivances. On the rocky shores of Lake Garda, and up over the mountain slopes to the heights of Monte Baldo, grows Cytisus radiatus, a shrub of unusual appearance (see fig. 691). Its branches only possess rudimentary green leaves, and are themselves furnished with green tissue, which plays the same role as that assigned to the mesophyll of the leaf-lamina in normal foliaceous plants. Fig. 67.—Over-arched Stomata of Australian Proteacex. 1 Vertical section through a leaf of Hakea florida, 2 Surface view of the same leaf; x320. 8 Vertical section of a leaf of Protea mellifera. + Surface view of the same leaf; x360. These green branches bear very numerous secondary branches inserted in decus- sating pairs. On the secondary branches new shoots develop every spring exactly similar in form, and arranged in the same manner. At the period when this development is taking place, the humidity in that part of the Southern Alps, to which Monte Baldo belongs, is very great. In dull weather, rain and mist, or dew in fine weather, deposit large quantities of water on the soil, and on the plants covering it, particularly in the alpine region of the above-named mountains, on the westerly slopes leading down to the lake, which are thickly clothed with the shrubs in question. It is therefore important that the rod-like branches of this Cytisus should be able to breathe and transpire without hindrance, and that the short time during which the conditions for these vital transactions are favourable, should be fully and wholly taken advantage of. Here again the point above all others to be 298 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. aimed at is to keep a free passage for the water-vapour which must escape from the stomata. To bring this about, the stomata are situated in grooves filled with air which are sunk in the green tissue, and which give a striped appearance to the branches. Water cannot force out the air from these narrow furrows which run along the green branches and twigs, six of them to each branch. The branches may remain submerged in water for an hour without a trace of moisture entering the furrow. Moreover hairs are present in the furrows as a guard against moisture. These cannot be wetted, and the air adheres to them just as to the cuticular pegs of the bamboo leaf. A clear idea of this arrangement is given in the transverse section of the stem shown in fig. 69° and 694. The adjacent section of the green branch of the Australian Casuarina quadrivalvis shows that these curious plants also have exactly the same arrangements, that the stomata lie at the bottom of 2 SSS ones ee= LJ Fig. 68.—Stomata in Pit-like Depressions. 1 Surface view of a leaf of Dryandra floribunda. A portion of the hairs which fill the pit is removed, in order to show the stomata; x350. 2 Vertical section through a leaf of Dryandra floribunda; x 300. narrow furrows which run along the green leafless branches, and that peculiar hair- structures are present in the: furrows, to which the air adheres, forming a barrier against water, exactly as in those of the Cytisus. The Casuarine, which must finish their work for the year during the very short rainy period of their native country, require during this time arrangements providing for unhindered transpira- tion no less than does the Cytisws in the Southern Alps. Altogether this con- trivance is found to be present in only a limited number of cases; in perhaps only twenty papilionaceous shrubs, most of which belong to the Spanish flora, of the genera Retama, Genista, Ulex, and Sarrothammus, in addition to the Australian Casuarinas, and in allied species of Cytisus (holopetalus, purgans, ephedroides, equisetiformis, candicans, albus, &c.). Most remarkably also this arrangement occurs in a small species of Broom (Genista pilosa), which is distributed over the mountains of Central Europe, over the heaths of the Baltic Lowlands, Denmark, Belgium, and England. And the presence of this contrivance here is the more strange, from the fact that the green branches with their furrows, in which lie stomata, are not leafless, but, on the contrary, are provided with a comparatively well-developed foliage. Among the most peculiar plants whose stomata are concealed in hidden nooks, MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. 299 impenetrable by water, are two very small orchids, of which one, Bolbophyllum minutissimum, grows in company with mosses on blocks of sandstone and on the bark of trees in the rocky ravines near Port Jackson, and on the Richmond River on the east coast of Australia; the other, Bolbophyllum Odoardi, lives in similar > PQY’ ies Ea ie rr a) Tn poe ri re ae ihe ae oss Wi 3 Ss ae a Fig. 69.—Stomata in the Furrows of Green Stems. ‘ Branch of Cytisus radiatus; natural size. 2 Portion of a branch; x10. 8 Cross section of this branch; x30. 4 Part of the same section; x150. 5 Branch of Casuarina quadrivalvis; natural size. 6 Portion of a branch; x8. 7 Cross section of this branch; x30. 8 Part of the cross section; x130. situations in Borneo. Both have a filamentous rhizome from which spring rootlets (from 2 to 5 mm. long and 0°3 mm. thick), arranged in pairs, by which they attach themselves to the stone and the bark of trees. Above the origin of each pair of rootlets is a little disc-shaped tuber, from 14 to 3 mm. in diameter, and } mm. thick, with an aperture on the upper surface, scarcely #5 mm. broad, leading into a hollow chamber within the disc-shaped tubers, about 0°5 mm. broad and 0'1 mm. high (see figure 70). The leaves of Bolbophyllum minutissimum are reduced 300 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. to tiny pointed scales about } mm. in length; two of them are situated at the mouth of each cavity, and are inflected towards one another across it. In Bolbo- phyllum Odoardi, each of the small tubers bears only one small green leaf, which is about 14 mm. long and 1 mm. broad, and is placed close to the opening of the chamber (see fig. 7045), Stomata are found exclusively in the interior of the hollow tubers. Water cannot enter through the narrow mouth into the air-containing chamber, and even when, in the rainy season, the whole of the mossy carpet, in which these smallest of all orchids are interwoven, is saturated with water, their transpiration continues unhindered, provided that the other conditions on which it depends are fulfilled. It is obvious that these structures which prevent moisture reaching the stomata during the wet season of the year can take on another function Fig. 70.—Orchids whose Stomata lie in Hollow Tubercles. 1 Bolbophylt inutisst 2 A tuber seen from above; x8. % Vertical section through this tuber; x15. 4 Bolbophyllum Odoardi. 5A tuber; x6. 6 Longitudinal section through this tuber; x6. in a succeeding dry period, which may follow immediately; but this must be spoken of again later. The occurrence of “rolled leaves”, which are observed in so many plants of widely different affinity, is also connected with the keeping of water from the stomata. The rolled leaf is always undivided, of small area, generally linear, but sometimes ovate-linear, elliptical, or even circular in outline; always stiff, and usually ever- green, and therefore living through two or three periods of vegetation. Its edges are bent down and more or less rolled back, even whilst still hidden in the bud. In consequence of this, the lower side which faces the soil is hollowed to a greater or less extent, while the upper side, turned skyward, is arched. Frequently the leaf is rolled so as to inclose an actual chamber, which only communicates with the outer world by a very narrow fissure, as is the case, for example, in the Crowberry (Empetrum). The rolled-back margins of the leaves in this plant almost touch one another, and the epidermis of the lower side of the leaf forms the actual lining of the cavity which resulted from the rolling of the leaf (see fig. 71°). MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. 301 If the bent-back margins do not fit so closely together, a groove appears on the under side of the leaf, which is more or less sunken according to the extent of the rolling, as for example in the Heaths (Erica caffra, vestita, &e., see fig. 711). Occasionally a groove is developed which divides into two side furrows running oo yh te a SG WG Sy SGB a). SO —CDBOEEK 5 SS eM, oe, ZS » ae eS YZ a yy : aL) “A 4 Pat HS SS D> os ty, SGA 4 \ y Veal Coe ice Fig. 71.—Transverse Sections through Rolled Leaves. 1 Erica caffra; x280. 2 Empetrum nigrum; x160. % Andromeda tetragona; x150, * Tylanthus ericoides; x130. 5 Salix reticulata; x 200, beneath the rolled edges, as for example in the leaves of Andromeda tetragona (fig. 71%), and in those of the Cape Rhamnea, T'ylanthus ericoides (fig. 71‘). The central portion of the space framed in by the rolled-back leaves is also frequently divided into two longitudinal grooves, and in such a manner that the tissue below the midrib of the leaf may project as a broad strong band. On the under side of the leaf, therefore, are three longitudinally elongated parallel projections, a central one under the midrib, and two lateral, which have been formed by the rolled-back margins 302 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. of the leaf. On the right and left of the middle ridge lie two deep grooves, which are apparent to the naked eye as light stripes between the dark green projecting portions. This is the case, for example, in the leaves of the Azalea procumbens, also in one of the Ericacee known by the name of Loiselewrea, which covers the soil with a close-matted carpet wherever it makes its appearance, and is widely distributed through Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, Lappland, and generally through the whole Arctic region, as well as over the high mountains of Scandinavia, the Pyrenees, Alps, and Carpathians. The annexed figure 72 represents a transverse section through a single rolled leaf of Azalea, a hundred and forty times its natural size. Occasionally several strong anastomosing ribs project from the under side of the rolled leaf, inclosing small pits and depressions in whose depth stomata are situated, as may be seen in the leaves of the widely distributed Willow, Salia reticulata (see fig. 71°). Although all these rolled leaves have an appearance of firmness and solidity, and frequently remind one of the needle-like leaves of the conifers, they are, unlike these, filled up with a very loose spongy parenchyma, which takes up far more room than the palisade tissue lying beneath the epidermis of the upper side. The upper epidermis of all rolled leaves is easily wetted, frequently uneven and finely wrinkled, destitute of any waxy covering; the cells strongly thickened on their outer walls, and pressed closely together, so as to leave no spaces between them. On the under side it is very different. Here stomata are present in great number, and the epidermis is either covered with wax, as in the Marsh Andromeda, the Whortle- berry, and the Reticulate Willow (Andromeda polifolia, Oxycoccos palustris, and Salix reticulata), or it is clothed with a fine felt-work,as, for example, in Ledum palustre. Very often peculiar rod-shaped or filamentous projections of the cuticle are present, which at first sight might be taken for hairs, but which differ from hairs in being solid, not hollow. Figs. 72 and 71128 show these structures (which may be considered as counterparts of the cuticular pegs on the bamboo leaf) on the under side of Azalea procumbens, Erica caffra, and Andromeda tetragona, as well as on the edges of the fissure which leads into the hollow leaf of the Crow- berry (Empetrum nigrum). These structures are to be found almost without exception in the heathers of the northern moors as well as in the Mediterranean and Cape flora. The importance of this continuous delicate coat lies chiefly in the fact that air adheres to it as to the cuticular pegs of the bamboo leaf, and indeed so firmly that even water, under considerable pressure, is not able to displace it. On placing a leaf of Azalea procumbens under water, two elongated air-bubbles are seen along the two longitudinal furrows, which glisten like two strips of silver. Even shaking the leaf to and fro will not dislodge these air-vesicles, and even if the branch has been left submerged for a week, this air will still cling to the depressions in whose depths the stomata occur. If the branch be removed from the water it will be seen that the upper side of the leaves is wet, while water has been kept away from the stomata of the under side. And as with Azalea procumbens, so is MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR, 303 it with all other rolled leaves, whether they belong to Cape plants or to heath plants of the Baltic lowlands, It cannot be doubted that the mechanism of rolled leaves, as just described, furnishes a protection for the stomata against moisture, and keeps open a passage for aqueous vapour and excreted gases. The question is now only how it comes about that this arrangement is to be met with in plants of such widely distant countries and under such differences of climate? In order to understand this clearly, let us imagine ourselves in some of the regions which are specially characterized by the abundance of plants with rolled leaves. First, on one of the high ridges of the Central Alps, where the low-lying Azalea spreads a thick covering over the soil, where Erica carnea in great quantity Fig. 72.—Vertical Section through a Rolled Leaf of the Trailing Azalea (Azalea procumbens); x140. covers broad slopes, where Dryas octopetala, Salia reticulata, Homogyne discolor, Saxifraga cesia, and many other plants which possess evergreen rolled leaves weave their carpet over the stony earth. The ground in which all these plants are rooted, and from which they draw their fluid nourishment, has many natural dikes and retains a large quantity of water, not only from the melting of the heavy winter mantle of snow, but also from the abundant rain of summer. For weeks together the heights are wrapped in a cold mist which saturates everything with moisture, and drops of water hang from the stems and leaves, unable to evaporate as long as the air remains so supercharged with vapour. At length the sky clears again, and the water on the plants begins to disappear. But even during the fine night following, all the plants become covered with a very heavy dew in consequence of their rapid cooling and radiation, and this not unfrequently remains until the middle of the next day. Transpiration at last occurs when the sun shines, and particularly if dry winds sweep over the heights. But who knows how long this state of things will continue? Each moment is precious, and every hindrance to the evaporation, so important for the plants, would be a distinct disadvantage. The outlets for aqueous vapour on the under side of the leaves especially should not be obstructed, and the above described contrivance is arranged with this end in 304 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. view. It can hardly be doubted that the earlier mentioned plants of high moun- tainous regions cease to transpire for weeks at a time in the wet seasons, when a thick unbroken mist covers the slopes, and earth, stones, and vegetation are dripping with moisture; and of course the conduction of food-salts to the green leaves is interrupted to a corresponding extent. If one considers how short a period is afforded to plants of high mountain districts in which to perform their year’s work, it will be understood how the most active means for promoting transpiration must - be brought into play, and how everything which might interrupt or limit this process, so important to the welfare of the plant, must be avoided. A few months after the last snow has melted on the heights, fresh snow again falls, and entirely prevents growth and nourishment during the long winter. These climatic conditions account for the fact that so many Alpine plants, almost all those having rolled leaves, are evergreen. It is necessary that every sunbeam during the short vegetative period should be utilized, and that the leaves retained from the previous year should be able to transpire and to form organic materials on the first sunny day after the winter snow has melted, although the soil may have become only slightly warmed. It may perhaps be urged against this explanation that though, in the steppes the period of vegetation is restricted to the brief space of three months, nevertheless evergreen plants with rolled leaves are completely absent. But the conditions of moisture on the steppes during this three months’ vegetative period are essentially different from those of the high mountain region. In the steppes, transpiration is never brought to a temporary standstill by too much moisture; evaporation can take place uninterruptedly from the leaves, and they have to be protected not from moisture, but from over-transpiration. With the exception of the halophytes and a few other growths which are particularly well protected, no plants, on account of the extreme dryness of the air, can retain their green foliage in the height of summer on the steppes. Some of the plants which adorn the high mountains of southern regions make their appearance in the lower plains of the extreme north. The same carpet of Trailing Azalea, Dwarf Willows, and Dryas (Azalea procumbens, Salia reticulata, Dryas octopetala) is found on the soil underfoot. In addition are other small plants which remain green during the winter (e.g. Cassiope tetragona), which are similarly provided with rolled leaves. Even if we were not informed by Arctic explorers that the number of foggy days in the course of the short Arctic summer is much greater than on the mountain heights of the south, and that therefore a help instead of a hindrance to transpiration is required, the utmost use being made of the short time in which it is possible to draw food-salts from the soil, we might infer this to be the case from the frequent appearance of these small carpet-forming plants with their evergreen rolled leaves. Apart from other considerations, and disregarding the development of the various floral areas in point of time, the above signification of the evergreen rolled leaves explains the similarity and partial identity of the arctic flora with that of the heights mentioned. Let us turn now to the low-lying country along the North and Baltic Seas, and MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. 305 to the lowlands, which extend as far as the northern slopes of the Alps. Where man has not transformed the ground into arable soil, only moor and heath, heath and moor, are seen in wearisome monotony. On the moors especially are always the same plants—various Heaths (Calluna vulgaris, Erica Tetralia, Erica cinerea), Black Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), Whortleberry (Oxycoccos palustris), Marsh Andromeda (Andromeda polifolia), Wild Rosemary (Ledwm palustre)—all plants. with evergreen rolled leaves, just as on the mountain heights. Some of these small evergreen bushes, viz. the Crowberry and the common Ling (Calluna vulgaris), may be traced in an unbroken range from the plains up to a height of 2450 metres on the slopes of the Alps. Strange to say, these plants do not blossom much earlier on the lowlands than on the high Alpine regions, and it has actually been shown that. Calluna blooms rather sooner at a height of 2000 metres than in the northern portion of the Baltic lowlands. How is this? The winter snow has long disappeared from the lowlands, while the hill-sides above are still concealed under their cold white covering. The winter snow has gone, to be sure, but not the winter! While every- thing around is already in blossom, while the ear is already visible on the stalks of rye, the neighbouring moor is still dismal, waste, and lifeless. A month or so later there is a stir on the dry soil of the cold moor, and the absorbent roots of the plants which have evergreen rolled leaves commence their activity. When the warm days of midsummer arrive and the sun sends down its powerful rays, the temperature of the soil quickly increases, and indeed rises far more than would be thought possible. The damp cushion of bog-moss at mid-day feels quite warm; and a thermometer placed 3 ems. below the surface in the uppermost mossy layer of a moor on a cloudless summer day (22nd June) showed a temperature of 31° C. while the tem- perature of the air in the shade was 13°! An unpleasant vapour rises from the damp. earth, which settles on the surface, and makes a walk over the moor particularly disagreeable. Scarcely has the sun set in glowing red on the horizon when this vapour condenses into patches of mist which settle over the dark expanse; stems, branches, and leaves are covered with drops of water, and next morning everything is as thoroughly soaked as if it had rained throughout the night. This process, which is regularly repeated during the fine weather, is only interrupted when a damp wind from the sea blows, driving masses of cloud over the heath, or when copious rain saturates the soil. It needs no further showing that under such condi- tions an abundant and continuous transpiration from plants is impossible, and that in the short intervals which are allowed to the leaves for transpiration, the outlets from the wide-meshed spongy parenchyma must not be obstructed; and it does not need further proof that the evergreen rolled leaf is the form most suited and adapted to these conditions. The flora of the Cape of Good Hope may not unjustly be compared with that of the Baltic lowlands—countless low bushes which are very like Heaths, Wild Rose- mary, and Crowberry in appearance—all with small rigid evergreen leaves, and entire rolled-back margins; the upper side of the leaf usually dark green, the under side having the same arrangements ‘as shown in the rolled leaves of plants growing on VoL. I, 20 306 MAINTENANCE OF A FREE PASSAGE FOR AQUEOUS VAPOUR. moors which border the Baltic Sea, and in the cold Arctic tundra. This shrubby evergreen vegetation of the Cape belongs indeed in part to the same families as these. Heaths especially are to be found in abundant variety; as many as 400 species can be counted—many more than are furnished by the whole of the rest of the world taken together. But a great number of species from other families, viz. Rhamnex, Proteacex, Epacridex, and Santalacew, possess an exactly similar foliage, and without blossom and fruit are often indistinguishable from the heaths. This low evergreen bush vegetation is not distributed all over the Cape, but is restricted to the neighbourhood of the coast, to the country which slopes in terraces down to the south-west, and to the celebrated Table Mountain, rising abruptly above Cape Town. The aqueous vapour brought by the sea-winds condenses directly over these regions, and for five months, from May till the beginning of October, the soil is not only soaked by abundant rain, but what is perhaps of even greater moment, all the ever- green bushes are kept in a damp condition by the falling mist, and often are dripping with water just like the heaths on the moors of the Baltic lowlands. When the development of vegetation on the lower terraces of the south-west coast is at a standstill on account of the increasing dryness, the summit of the Table Mountain is still enveloped in the celebrated mass of cloud known as the “table-_ cloth”, and the plants growing on the ridges and plateaus are during this time as much saturated as the Trailing Azalea, which robs the south wind of its moisture on the mountain ridges of the Central Alps. It is, however, in this damp period that the growth of the plants in question takes place. Most of the plants on the heights of the Table Mountain blossom and put forth new shoots in February, March, and April; on the lower terraces from May to September. In the northern regions and on mountain heights the beginning and end of the year’s work in plants is limited by the cold, but in the Cape the dryness of the soil is the cause which brings the upward current of the sap in vegetation to a standstill for so long a time. At the coast, however, this dryness is never so severe that the plants are exposed to the danger of withering up altogether, as on the steppes. As on the south-west coasts of the Cape, so is it round about the Mediterranean Sea and in the west of Europe, which is swept by sea-winds laden with vapour from the Atlantic; for example, Portugal and the south-west of France, which are in like case, characterized by an abundance of low bushes, with evergreen rolled leaves, and especially by some gregarious heaths. Here also the year’s growth takes place in the wettest season, and arrangements must be made that during this period the formation of organic materials, the withdrawal of food-salts from the soil, and consequently unhindered transpiration may be carried on. Here, too, dry- ness interrupts the activity of the absorbent roots, and the evergreen vegetation of the coast-line extends inland as far as the damp sea-winds make themselves felt; while still further inland a steppe-like vegetation preponderates. The analogy pre- sented by the Mediterranean flora goes so far that, on the southern point of Istria, for example, which may be compared as to shape with the south point of Africa, quantities of the evergreen Erica arborea are only to be found on the south-west PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. 307 coast district on a comparatively narrow strip of land; while in the interior of Istria the waste dry terraces of the Tschitscherboden (which might be compared with the arid plains of the Cape) show no trace of a heath vegetation. Why the plants with evergreen leaves which grow in the far north, on the heights of the Alps, on the Baltic lowlands, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, on the borders of the Mediterranean basin, and at the Cape of Good Hope are not all of the same species, is a question which cannot be answered here; yet it seems proper to point out that all plants furnished with evergreen rolled leaves, whose year’s work is stopped by dryness, would freeze in countries where the earth in winter is covered with snow, i.e. the molecular structure of their protoplasm would be entirely altered by the frost, which would kill it; while the protoplasm of the analogous northern forms would suffer no harm from the cold. It is well worthy of remark in this connection that some of the last-mentioned plants have an extra- ordinarily wide distribution; that they may actually be found, quite similar in appearance, in the bleak north, and in the southern districts, if only those conditions of moisture which we have shown to account for the form of the leaves obtain in the places mentioned. Thus the Irish Heath (Daboecia polifolia) may be found along the Atlantic coast as far as Portugal, and the common Ling (Calluna vulgaris) grows just as well at a height of 2450 metres above the sea beside the glaciers of the Ctzthal in the Central Alps, as further south on the Abazzia, surrounded by laurel groves on the sea-coast of Istria. 3. PREVENTION OF EXCESSIVE TRANSPIRATION. Protective arrangements on the Epidermis.—Form and Position of Transpiring Leaves and Branches. PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. The relation of the form of the evergreen rolled leaf to transpiration is anything but exhaustéd in the foregoing account. The part played by this form of leaf, in particular during the dry season of the year, yet remains to be discussed. If it is necessary during the wet period that transpiration should be increased as much as possible, and that everything which might restrict the exhalation of aqueous vapour from the stomata should be kept away, it is also of importance that on the appear- ance of the dry season the equilibrium between the water taken from the soil and the water excreted by the leaves should not be destroyed, and that an excessive evaporation from the portions of the plant above ground should be hindered. New seasons bring new problems to be solved. At the time when the water-current begins to ascend from the soil saturated by the winter rains, we have an aid to transpiration; later on, in the dry period, we have a protection against the dangers which might attend excessive evaporation. It is certainly of great interest to see 308 PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. how a whole group of the arrangements discussed above, among which the rolled leaf is not the least noticeable, serve, at different seasons of the year, and often at different times of the same day, two distinct purposes, as indicated. First, the stomata themselves. While the green tissue has need of food-salts from the soil for the manufacture of organic materials, they cannot be too widely opened; everything is welcome, then, which promotes transpiration, and conse- quently assists in the elevation of fiuid nourishment from the saturated soil. But if the temperature and dryness of the air increase after the green parenchyma has finished its yearly task, or if the soil from which the absorbent roots have hitherto derived their supply of fluid become so dry that the water exhaled from the aérial positions can no longer be replaced, it is of the greatest importance that the stomata should be closed. This is brought about by the two cells bounding the stoma, which have been termed the “ guard ” cells. In order to clearly understand the mechanism of the opening and closing of stomata, it Is necessary to examine the structure of these guard-cells more in detail. Both are bean-shaped in outline, their concave surfaces being turned towards the stoma; they are only connected with one another at their extremities. By their convex sides they are in contact with ordinary epidermal cells; their outer walls are in contact with the atmospheric air, and their inner walls with the spongy parenchyma. Both the innermost and outermost walls of the guard-cell are strongly thickened, but the wall by which they are connected with neighbouring epidermal cells, as well as that portion which directly borders the stoma, is relatively thin, elastic, and extensible. If the figure of two such guard-cells be imitated in caoutchouc, and they be fitted together like an actual closed stomate—water being forced into them under considerable pressure—the curvature of the thin and elastic portions of the walls will be most altered. The side wall in contact with the neighbouring epidermal cell bulges out, and at the same time the whole cell becomes elongated in a direction perpendicular to the surface. By this means the two guard-cells are forced apart. When the water is allowed to flow out of the swollen caoutchouc cells, they again fall back into position, the two portions of the walls which border the stoma coming into contact with each other and closing the opening. The same thing occurs in the actual guard-cells of the living plant. As soon as they become distended, they separate from one another; when they relax and resume their original position, they come closely into contact again. This process bears a strong resemblance to the changes in the cells of the pulvini at the base of the sensitive leaves of Mimosa, which will be described later, and it is. highly probable that it may be traced back to a similar stimulation. That the guard-cells actually separate from one another by swelling up, i.e. by absorbing fluid, and then close together again in consequence of the loss of water, can be shown by first supplying water and then withdrawing it by a solution of sugar. In the former case the stomata open, in the latter they close, and it may therefore be considered an established fact that a closing movement is brought about by the extra loss of water in dry air. But if these pores, through which water vapour escapes when the plants PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. 309 are full of sap, close as soon as there is a danger of too much evaporation, the mechanism must be considered as excellently regulating transpiration, and as pro- viding a true preventative against over-evaporation. This closure of the exhalent chambers in the interior of the leaf, important as it is, would alone be sufficient in but a very few cases to ward off this threatened danger. If the epidermis which stretches over the thin-walled transpiring cells of the spongy parenchyma is itself thin-walled and succulent, water will be exhaled from it also into the dry atmosphere; this loss of water from the epidermal cells is compensated for by water drawn from the neighbouring parenchymatous cells in the interior of the leaf, and ultimately the leaves would wither up if the supply of water from the roots were stopped or became insufficient. Therefore the epidermal cells must be adequately prevented from exhaling. When this is the case, and when the stomata are closed, the spongy parenchyma, and, generally speaking, all the succulent cells in the interior, are securely protected. The walls of the epidermal cells in the first stages of their development are composed mainly of cellulose, and are uniformly thin and delicate on all sides. The outer wall, which is in contact with the air, then becomes thickened and divided into an inner and an outer layer. The inner retains its original character, but the outer —the so-called “cuticle”—undergoes great modifications. The cellulose becomes changed, and is replaced by a mixture of stearin and the glyceride of a fatty acid (suberic acid), forming a tallow-like fat which is termed cutin or suberin. In consequence of this metamorphosis the cell-wall becomes less and less permeable to water, and when it has attained a considerable thickness it becomes at length almost entirely impervious to water and aqueous vapour. Frequently, between the inner cellulose and the outer corky layer, other so-called “cuticularized layers” are formed, whose chief constituent is again suberin, and which often attain to a con- siderable bulk. Aquatic plants, which are not exposed to the danger of excessive evaporation, of course do not require this protection. Plants whose leaves are surrounded by air, on the other hand, can never entirely dispense with it. The thickness of these corky layers is extremely variable according to the condition of humidity of the air. Where the air is very damp throughout the year, the outer wall of the epidermal leaf-cells appears to be only slightly thicker than the inner, and the cuticle only forms a thin continuous layer. On the other hand, plants which are temporarily exposed to dry air possess very highly developed cuticular strata. Especially when the leaves are evergreen and remain several years on the branches, as, for example, in the Holly (Ilea Aquifoliwm, see fig. 73”), and in the Oleander (Neriwm Oleander, fig. 73°), the cuticular layers are so strongly developed that the outer wall of the epidermal cells is many times thicker than the inner wall. Evergreen parasites, as, for example, the Mistletoe (fig. 731), those tropical orchids and Bromeliaceze which live epiphytically on the bark of trees and are often exposed to great dryness in the hot season of the year, cactiform plants, and generally the majority of succulent plants, possess epidermal cells with very strongly thickened outer walls. This is so 310 PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. also in the case of the pines with evergreen needle-shaped leaves, where, as a rule, the water compensating for that exhaled by the leaves cannot come quickly through open channels, but only slowly through the woody cells. Usually the cuticle and cuticular layers are of equal thickness over the whole leaf surface; this is so espe- cially in smooth, shiny, leathery evergreen leaves. Not infrequently, however, an irregular thickening is seen, particularly in the neighbourhood of stomata, where circular ramparts are raised, as in Protea, mellifera (see fig. 67 *), or peg-shaped pro- jections are formed, as in the Bamboo (see fig. 66), or elongated hair-like filaments arise, as in the rolled leaves of Azalea and many Heaths (see figs. 71 and 72). It would, however, be erroneous to suppose that this formation of a thick cuticle on the epidermis is a peculiarity of evergreen leaves. Plants which are surrounded Fig. 73.—Thickened Stratified Cuticle. 1 Vertical section of a portion of the leaf of Mistletoe (Viscum album); x420. 2 Vertical section of a portion of the leaf of Holly (Ilex Aquifolium); x500. 3 Vertical section of leaf of Oleander (Nertum Oleander); x320. all the year by a damp atmosphere, and are never exposed in their natural condition to the danger of too much evaporation, very often have evergreen leaves, and yet the outer wall of the epidermal cells is not at all, or only very slightly, thicker than the inner; and conversely, plants with apparently thin delicate leaves, which are green only in the summer, have quite conspicuous thickening-layers. A knowledge of these conditions is of the utmost importance in plant culture, and gardeners know very well that many plants, although they appear to be capable of resistance, can never be removed from the damp air of the greenhouses, because the leaves then become desiccated like those of aquatic plants which have been taken out of water and exposed to the air. A species of palm, Caryota propinqua, which is repre- sented in its native habitat in fig. 74 opposite, was grown in the botanical gardens at Vienna, and it developed in the damp air a magnificent stem with fine large leaves. On a summer day, when the temperature of the open air coincided with that of the greenhouse, this Caryota, together with the tub in which it was rooted, was carried into the open and placed in a somewhat shady place, but partly exposed PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. 311 312 PROTECTIVE. ARRANGEMENTS ON. THE EPIDERMIS. to the sun’s heat. One day, after a warm dry east wind had swept for only a short time over the foliage, it became quite brown, and in the evening all the leaves were entirely dried up and dead. And yet leaf-segments of this palm appear to be firm, leathery, and dry, and one would have supposed them to be particularly well pro- tected against drying up. The section of part of a leaf which is represented in fig. 75, however, corrects this impression. This shows that the epidermal cells are certainly very compact, by which the firmness of the leaf is materially increased, but that their walls are not thickened, being only like those of a delicate fern in this respect. Under these small thin-walled epidermal cells lie large succulent cells which form the so-called aqueous tissue, the structure of whose walls likewise cannot limit evaporation; below these are the large succulent cells of the green tissue. A glance at this leaf section will make it clear that this palm is well meas@asaeseeseaseeaseaenpoeeaa ea ee eeeeoesaesseaasesaeeseeeeseeeetaoa es in B=, ‘ Fig. 75.—Vertical section of a portion of the leaf of Caryota propingua; x260. adapted to its warm damp habitat, where it is never exposed to a strong evaporiza- tion, but not to the dry, even if warm, air of a Continental climate. To the wax-like excretions of the cell-wall which form a delicate bloom, easily rubbed off, on both sides of the leaf, frequently colouring it pale blue, grey, or white instead of dark green, it has already been stated that the réle is assigned of protect- ing the stomata from moisture. From what has been said, one would expect that these waxy coverings, which are especially to be met with in the Cruciferse and Rutacee of steppes, in many acacias and Myrtacez of Australia, and in the pinks and spurges of the Mediterranean flora, would also be able to limit transpiration in the epidermis—that is, in the structures over which the bloom-like covering extends. Experiments specially undertaken, have also shown that in the same space of time, and under otherwise similar conditions, leaves whose bloom had been carefully rubbed off lost almost a third more water than others whose waxy covering had been left intact. That the varnish-like covering of the epidermis, composed of a mixture of mucilage and resin (“balsam”), which is excreted from capitate hairs and other glandular structures, is able to restrict transpiration has also been pointed out. These coverings are especially developed in many plants of the Mediterranean flora, particularly in a whole group of Cistus (C. laurcfolius, populifolius, Clusia, ladani- ferus, monspeliensis, &c.); further in shrubby plants which develop late, in the height of summer—as, for example, in Inula viscosa, which is so abundant: on the PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS, 313 coast. Plants of steppes and prairies (eg. Centaurea Balsamita of the Persian steppes and Grindelia squarrosa in the prairies of North America) are likewise protected throughout life from over-vaporization by varnish-like coverings of this kind; while the foliage of Cherry, Apricot, and Peach trees, as well as of Birches, Sweet Willows, Balsam and Pyramidal Poplars, and the Black Alder, is only covered with such a varnish while young, when it has just burst from the buds, and the outer walls of the epidermal cells have not yet become sufficiently thickened; later on, however, when the cuticularized layers have become fully formed, this covering which limits transpiration disappears. Only on those places of the epidermis, where the outer walls of the cells remain very thin and permeable by fluids and gases, is this coat of balsam retained until the leaf is to be thrown off; but in this case it probably regulates the absorption of atmospheric water. How far the incrustations of lime and salt excretions take part in the absorption of atmospheric water by organs situated above the ground has likewise already been considered in the section on water absorption. It is obvious that these concretions and coverings of the epidermis must be capable of restricting transpiration. Incrustations of lime are principally found in plants which grow in the clefts and crevices of rocks; excretions of salt are only observed in shore-plants and those of steppes and wastes, but then always on low bushes and shrubs with small narrow leaves, and herbs whose foliage rests on the soil. The reason for this is again easily found. High trees could not support the weight of leaves loaded with incrustations of lime and salt, even if their trunks and branches possessed the greatest strength imaginable. . It has been observed that plants whose leaves are covered by incrustations of lime and salt, or whose epidermal cells are strongly thickened on their outer walls by corky layers, are almost always destitute of hairs; while plants, on the other hand, whose epidermal cells possess delicate outer walls, if they are not surrounded by a damp atmosphere throughout the year, nor submerged in water, are usually furnished with structures known as. plant-hairs (trichomes); from which it may be inferred that the hairy covering of the leaf or stalk in question is able to protect it from drying up in just the same way as the corky layers. Of course only those hairs are meant whose protoplasmic contents have disappeared, and which have become sapless and filled with air; for those hair-structures, which consist of cells rich in sap and osmotic contents, would not help in preventing evaporation from the deeper tissue; they are themselves in need of protection, and special protective arrangements exist for them, as already set forth in the discussion on the absorption of water by aérial portions of the plant. Such structures would, if unprotected, give off water to the surrounding air, and continually absorb fluid from adjacent cells below them. This action does not take place in air-containing cells, and if their dry membranes, and the air which they inclose, are interpolated between the dry atmosphere and the succulent tissue below, this latter will be protected from evapo- ration, like damp earth covered with a layer of dry straw or reeds, or the fluid at the bottom of a bottle whose neck is closed with a plug of cotton-wool. 314 PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. The importance of air-containing cells as a covering for succulent tissue must also be considered in another relation. It is well known that evaporation from the surface of fluid or a damp body is much increased by the warmth of the sun’s rays. On the other hand, if the heating is restricted, so also is the evaporation. If we use a dry cloth to shade from the sun, we lower not only the temperature, but also the amount of evaporation from the shaded body. The covering of air-containing hairs on leaves may be compared to such dry screens, and its action may be demonstrated by the following experiment :—Take two of the bi-coloured leaves of a Bramble bush, which are smooth on the upper side, but covered with a white felt-work of hairs on the lower, and which are exactly similar in size and position with regard to the sun, being situated very near each other on the stem. If these leaves are wrapped round thermometers, in such a way that the leaf which covers one thermo- meter bulb has its white felted side turned towards the sun, that covering the other, the green hairless side, it will be found that the temperature in the leaf whose smooth green side is directed towards the sun will in less than five minutes rise 2°-5° above that of the leaf whose white felted side is so directed. If such leaves are plucked and exposed to the sun, some with the white felted side, others with the smooth green side uppermost, the latter always shrivel and dry up much sooner than the former. There can be no doubt, after this, that a dry coat of hair over succulent plant tissue, which is exposed to the sun’s rays, considerably restricts the heating of, and exhalation from this tissue. The significance of the coverings of hair on portions of plants turned away from the sun, particularly on the under sides of flat and rolled leaves, has already been discussed. These coverings are only of slight importance as a means of protection against over-transpiration. In rare cases, indeed, it happens that the hairy covering on the side of the leaf turned from the sun, the lining of the leaf, so to speak, must act as a protection, since the flat leaf-lamina is so twisted and turned that the sun’s rays strike not on the upper but on the under surface. There are certain ferns of Southern Europe (Ceterach officinarum, Cheilanthes odora, Notochlena Marante), which, contrary to the habits of most of this shade-loving group, grow on blocks and walls which are exposed to the burning sun. In these ferns the upper surface of the leaf is smooth, but the under, on the other hand, is thickly covered with dry hair-scales. In wet weather the leaves are spread out flat, with the smooth surface uppermost; in dry weather they become rolled up, and the under cottony side is then exposed to the sun and to dry winds. Among the low herbaceous growths of the Mediterranean flora, a like behaviour is shown by the widely distri- buted Hawkweed, Hieracitwm Pilosella, whose radical leaves, forming a rosette on the soil, appear green on the upper and white on the under side, by reason of a felt- work of star-shaped hairs. In places where the ground easily dries up, and when there have been no showers for a long while, it is usually seen that first the margins of the leaves turn up, and then by degrees the whole leaf becomes bent and rolled, so that the lower side is turned towards the sun’s rays, and the white felt of hairs functions as a protective screen to the whole leaf. PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. 315 The relations between the hairy covering on the upper side of the leaf and trans- piration stand out, most strikingly, in those districts where plants during their vegetation period are, as a rule, exposed to dry air only for a few hours each day, and where their activity is not interrupted by a long warm dry period, but by frost and cold—as is the case, for example, in the Alpine region of mountain heights. On the Alps, the drying up of flowering plants by the sun only occurs in a very few Fig. 76.—Edelweiss (Gnaphalium Leontopedium), cases, viz., where the scanty soil on the narrow ledges of steep projecting rocks, and crags, and on rocky slopes, &c., is only watered by rain, mist, and dew. If no showers fall for several successive days, and the south wind blows over the heights with a clear sky day and night, these scanty layers of soil may dry up to such an extent that they are unable to supply the necessary fluid food to the plants rooted in them. Under these circumstances plants growing there have most pressing need of means of lessening transpiration in the leaves. In places such as these are to be found, almost without exception, plants whose leaves and stems are thickly covered on all sides with hairs, together with succulent plants and saxi- frages incrusted with lime. This is the habitat of the felted Whitlow-grass (Draba 316 PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. tomentosa, stellata), of the grey-leaved Ragwort (Senecio incanus and Carniolicus), of the magnificent silky Cinquefoil (Potentilla nitida), and of the white-leaved bitter Milfoil (Achillea Clavenne); especially is this the habitat of the most celebrated Alpine plants, of the scented Edelraut and the beautiful Edelweiss—the former (Artemisia Mutellina) with a grey shimmering silky coat, the latter (Gnaphalium Leontopodiwm) wrapped in dull white flannel. On looking at. the vertical section of the Edelweiss leaf (see fig. 771), one sees that the epidermal cells with their thin outer walls would be unable to regulate exhalation and drying in the sun, and that a powerful protection is afforded against too rapid evaporation, in case of extraordinary dryness, by the possession of a layer of sapless, air-filled, interwoven hair-structures. The Edelraut, Ragwort, and the other plants named, which grow on the sunny rocks of the Alps, show these same characters of leaf structure, and what has just been said about the Edelweiss applies fully to them also, It should be mentioned that on the heights of the Pyrenees, Abruzzi, and Carpathians, as well as on the Caucasus and Himalayas, the plants growing on sunny ridges of rock, where they are exposed to the wind, are covered with silk and wool exactly after the model of the Edelraut and Edelweiss, and that there is on the Himalayas an Edelweiss which is wonderfully similar to that of the European Alps. In the far north, on the other hand, where the flora in other respects has so much in common with that of the Alps, these plants are absent, and generally a search over the rocky crags for herbs and shrubs, whose leaves are furnished with silky or felt- like coverings on the upper surface, is futile. The genera which grow on these places and form a characteristic feature of the vegetation in consequence of their great abundance—as, for example, Diapensia Lapponica, Andromeda hypnoides, Mertensia maritima, Draba alpina, and others, possess remarkably smooth green leaves. When hairy coverings are present, they are restricted to the under Jeaf- surface, especially to that of rolled leaves. They are never found on the plants of rocky slopes, but only on those of damp marshy ground, or by the side of water which is for a short time free from ice. Here, however, they certainly do not help to lessen transpiration, but function in the way described above in the discussion on rolled leaves. It is indeed not too much to connect these facts with the conditions of the climate, and especially to explain the absence of plants whose foliage is silky or felt-like on the upper surface, by saying that a drying up of the soil and a limiting of the water supply never occurs on the narrow terraces of steep rocky declivities in Arctic regions, and that therefore there is no danger of over-evapora- tion to plants growing in those regions. It is in keeping with this explanation that on Central and South European mountains, on whose heights an Alpine vegetation is to be found, the number of forms having silky and felted foliage increases as these mountains are situated further south, and the more they are exposed to temporary dryness. Plants of the Edelweiss type are still wholly foreign to the Riesen-Gebirge; in the Northern Alps their number is comparatively small, in the Southern Alps they increase in a surprising manner, and the summits of the Magellastock, the ridges of PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. 317 the Sierra Nevada, and the mountains of Greece are unusually rich in such forms. If plants growing in such situations are protected against the dangers of too rapid and too abundant evaporation, how much more must this be the case in those regions where, with the increasing warmth of summer, the number of showers steadily diminishes; and where the soil becomes dried more and more deeply, so that all the plants whose roots are near the surface are unable to derive a drop more water from it? All plants which are to survive the dry period in such places must during this time entirely cease transpiring—they must, as it were, turn into a chrysalis and sleep during the summer. They actually do this in all sorts of different ways, and by the most diverse means. One of the commonest and most widely spread methods is, without doubt, by having the transpiring organs clothed with a thick covering of dry air-containing hairs. Plenty of examples of this are furnished by the flora of the Cape, Australia, Mexico, the savannahs and prairies of the New World, and the steppes and deserts of the Old. In the dry elevated plains of Brazil, Quito, and Mexico, there are large tracts covered with gregarious spurge- like growths and grey-haired species of Croton, and when the wind blows, moving these bushes to and fro, undulations are set up over wide extents of country, the whole appearing like a billowy sea of grey foliage. A similar picture is presented by the Painciras belonging to the Composite, or by the Lychnophora, on the high plains of Minas Geraes in Brazil. Nowhere in the whole world, however, does the presence of hairs on foliage, as a protection against exhalation, appear in such an abundant and varied manner as in the floral region surrounding the Mediterranean, known as the Mediterranean district. The trees have foliage with grey hairs; the low undergrowth of sage and various other bushes and semi-shrubs (for which the name “ Phrygian undergrowth”, used by Theophrastus, may be retained), as well as. the perennial shrubs and herbs growing on sunny hills and mountain slopes, are grey or white, and the preponderance of plants coloured thus to restrict evapora- tion has a noticeable influence on the character of the landscape. He who has only heard from books of the evergreen plants of the Greek, Spanish, and Italian floras, feels at the first sight of this grey vegetation that he has been in some degree deceived, and is tempted to alter the expression “evergreen” into “ever grey”. Every conceivable sort of hair structure is to be met with in these parts—coarse felt-work,. thick velvet, and white wool mixed in endless variety. Here is a leaf looking as if covered with a cobweb; there another as if bestrewn with ashes or clay; here a leaf surface, covered with closely pressed hairs or scutiform scales, glistens like a piece of satin; and here again is a plant with such a long flock of hair that one might imagine that sheep in passing had left pieces of their fleece hanging on it. There is hardly a family in the flora of the Mediterranean district which does not possess members richly provided in this way. The Composites are the most remarkable in this respect, especially the genera Andryala, Artemisia, Evax, Filago, Inula, and Santolina; then come the Labiates of the genera Phlomis, Salvia, Teucrium, Marrubium.,. Stachys, Sideritis, and Lavandula; rock-roses, bindweeds, scabious, 318 PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. plantains, papilionaceous plants, and plants of the Spurge-laurel family—just those plants which constitute the main part of the vegetation on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and which possess a thickly-woven covering of hair. Indeed representatives of families such as the Grasses, whose members are usually bare, here appear to be quite shaggy with hair. It is also very interesting to see that so many species, which have a wide range of distribution, and which, from Scandinavia to the coasts of the Mediterranean, have bare foliage, can in the South protect them- selves from drying up, by developing hairs on their epidermis. For instance, from Northern and Central Europe as far as the Alps, the epidermis of the stems and foliage of Silene inflata, Campanula Speculum, Galiwm rotundifoliwm, and Mentha Pulegiwm is smooth and bare; in the South,—particularly in Calabria,—the leaves and stems of these species are covered with thick down. Next to the Mediterranean flora, the neighbouring Egyptian and Arabian desert regions, the elevated steppes of Persia and Kurdistan, as well as the lowlands of Southern Russia and the plains of Hungary, show a comparatively large number of species whose leaves are thickly coated with hairs on both surfaces. Their number is less than that of the flora of the Mediterranean district, because in the steppes and deserts the dryness of the summer is greater than in that region, and even thick hairy coverings are not always a sufficient protection against this dryness, and also because in some of these districts the dry period passes directly into a severe winter, and the hairs would offer but a poor protection against the cold. Since on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea the winter temperature never falls below freezing point, evergreen and grey leaves remain there unmolested, and recommence their activity at the beginning of the next season. The successive developments of certain plant forms are very instructive with regard to the relations existing between whole floral regions and transpiration. In the steppes, Mediterranean district, and at the Cape, bulbous plants and annuals first make their appearance; then follow the perennial grasses and woody plants; and finally succulent plants and thickly-haired immortelles. The numerous tulips, narcissi, crocuses, stars of Bethlehem, asphodels, amaryllises, and all the other bulbous growths, which begin to sprout immediately after the first winter or spring rain, always have bare foliage. Their transpiration is very active in consequence of the rapidly-increasing temperature of the air, but the saturated soil provides a sufficient substitute for the evaporating water, and also has ready in a free state the food-salts which are required for rapid growth. The shrubs which sprout at the same time, the peonies and hellebores, as well as the host of annuals which spring up, blossom, and fructify in an inconceivably short time, almost all possess bare foliage, especially in the steppes. Towards midsummer, when the drought com- mences, all these plants are already in fruit; their foliage, which until now has been actively at work, begins to turn yellow and to dry up; their succulent tubers and bulbs are imbedded below the surface in soil which is now as hard as a stone; and the seeds which have fallen from the annual plants are easily able to survive the aridity of the summer and the severity of the winter, since they are inclosed in PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. : 319 protective coverings of great variety. Any plants which are still to retain their activity during the summer on the steppes or in the Mediterranean floral district would succeed very badly if only furnished with the bare foliage of the spring vegetation. If such a plant is to be protected from drying up, its transpiration must be lessened. This is effected by various protective arrangements, but best of all by a thick coating of hair. The papilionaceous plants and species of Orache, above all the immortelles and wormwoods (Helichrysum, Xeranthemum, Arte- mista), which are still in bloom in the height of the summer and can bear the strongest heat of the sun, are, as a rule, thickly covered with hair, and regions, which perhaps only a month before were clothed in fresh green, are now shrouded in dismal gray. With the transition from the wet period of the spring and winter rains to the dryness of midsummer, there is a corresponding gradual transition from the green of the bare, succulent hyacinth leaf to the grey of the rigid felt-covered leaf of the immortelle. A peculiar appearance is shown in Mediterranean floral districts by many biennial and perennial plants which one spring give rise to a rosette of leaves close to the soil, and in the spring following to a stem bearing both leaves and blossom, which arises from the centre of the rosette. This rosette formed in the first spring has to live through the dry hot summer, and is therefore covered with felted grey hairs; the stem formed in the second year which gives rise to the blossom, since it is formed during the wet period, has no need of the protective hairs, and is there- fore furnished with green foliage. The Salvia lavandulefolia and Scabiosa pulsatilordes of Granada, the Hieracium gymnocephalum of Dalmatia, and in the Mediterranean flora the wide-spread Helianthemum Tuberaria may be mentioned as examples of such plants. Their appearance is so strange that one involuntarily asks whether this green leafy stem really belongs to the grey rosette of leaves, or whether some one has not been playing a joke by putting together the stem and rosette of two different kinds of plants. These hair-like structures, called “covering hairs”, whose function is a pro- tection against excessive exhalation, exhibit a very great variety with regard to form. Notwithstanding this diversity, however, a certain degree of uniformity must not be overlooked, inasmuch as in individual species the same kind of hairs are always present. The coat of hair contributes not a little to the characteristic appearance of the species, and therefore has always been considered of especial value in description and discrimination. As a help to description the older botanists introduced a series of expressions into botanical terminology by which to denote shortly and tersely the most pronounced varieties, and this seems to be the most suitable place for explaining these terms—z.e., the forms of covering hairs which are signified by them. , First, those covering hairs consisting of a single epidermal cell, which grows out beyond the other epidermal cells, must be distinguished and set apart from those which have become multicellular by the formation of separation walls. Unicellular clothing hairs in many cases only project slightly above the surface 320 PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. of the leaf to which they belong; they bend down nearly at a right angle almost immediately above their place of insertion, so that the long tapering part of the hair cell lies on the leaf-surface, as shown in fig. 77%. When such hair-forms, in great numbers and parallel to one another, entirely cover the surface of the leaf, light is strongly reflected from them, and the surface looks just like a piece of silk. Such a covering of hair, which is seen particularly well on the shining foliage of the South European bindweeds (Convolvulus Cneorum, nitidus, olecefolius, tenurssimus, &c.), is termed “silky” (sericeus), Two varieties of this may be distinguished, viz. the more usual case in which all the hairs of the leaf lie parallel with the midrib, and the rarer case where the hairs assume a different position on the right and left of the midrib, the whole of those on either side being respectively parallel to the lateral ribs of their respective sides. The reflected light then only meets the eye of the observer, in any one position, from one half of the leaf, the other half therefore appearing dull. In such a case the whole leaf has that peculiar shimmer, changing on the slightest movement, which we admire on the wings of certain butterflies, and which is also shown by that variety of silken material known as satin. When the unicellular hairs do not lie on the surface, but rise up from it, the shimmer is altogether absent, or is only present to a. small extent. If the hairs are short, very numerous, and closely pressed together, they are said to be “ velvety ” (holosericeus); if they are of greater length and situated further apart, the expression “shaggy” (villosus) is used. Hairs which consist of single elongated air-containing cells, much twisted and bent, with thin and pliant walls, are called wool-hairs, and the covering formed by them is said to be “woolly” or “tomentose” (lanuginosus). Woolly hairs are always twisted spirally, sometimes loosely, sometimes tightly— frequently almost like a corkscrew. As a rule the spiral is in the opposite direction to the movement of the hand of a watch, whose direction is said to be to the left. It should also be noticed whether the elongated twisted cells of the wool-hairs are circular in cross section, as in the South European Centawrea Ragusina (see fig. 77°), or whether they are compressed like a ribbon, as in Gnaphalium tomentosum (fig. 77+). The latter case is by far the most common. Multicellular clothing hairs originate by the repeated division of certain epidermal cells caused by the formation of separation walls. These dividing walls are either all parallel to the surface of the leaf or stem, or some of them are perpen- dicular to the plane of the leaf. In the first case the cells are usually arranged like the links of a chain, and are termed jointed or articulated hairs. When such arti- culated hairs are short and not interwoven—as, for example, is the case in the beautiful gloxinias (see fig. 77 *), the surfaces clothed with them appear like velvet; when they are elongated, curved, and twisted and entwined, the leaf appears to be covered with wool (see fig. 77+), and to the naked eye this form of covering is the same as that already stated to be shown by unicellular covering hairs. Silky coats are also produced by multicellular hairs, even by such a peculiar form as is repre- sented in fig. 78°. These hairs are developed in the following manner. CEES 1 Floccose hairs of Verbascum thapsiforme. % Tufted hairs of Potentilla cinerea. % T-shaped hairs of Artemisia mutellina. 4 Actinia-like hairs of Correa speciosa. §Scutiform scales of Eleagnus angustifolia, %Stellate hairs of Aubretia deltoidea. x about 50. the leaf-surface), and which is the uppermost of the small group of cells projecting above the epidermis, is prolonged in three, four, or even more directions, so as to have a stellate appearance. Thus the covering of the leaf is seen to consist of three, four, or many-rayed stars, each supported on a short stalk (see figs, 78° and 77°). The rays of the stellate cells are frequently forked, as in Draba Thomasti (see figs. 77°). ‘In rare cases they have a comparatively large central portion, and are only divided at their circumference into short rays; they then look exactly like small sunshades spread out over the leaf-surface. This elegant form, which is represented in figs. 777 and 77%, has a particularly beautiful appearance in PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. 823 Koniga spinosa, a member of the Mediterranean flora. All these clothing hairs, with star-shaped indented upper cells, are grouped together under the name of “stellate hairs” (pili stellati). In Cruciferss and Malvacess they occur in endless variety. When the uppermost cell of the group forming the stellate hair is divided by separation walls, which in part are placed perpendicularly to the leaf-surface, branched hairs are the result. In branched hairs the branches, which are almost Fig. 79.—Flinty armour of Rochea falcata. 1 Section perpendicular to the leaf-surface. 2 Surface view; on the right hand the vesicular distended portion of some superficial cells is removed and the stomata are brought into view; x 350. always arranged in a stellate manner and are usually unicellular, can be dis- tinguished from the part which supports the branches. This portion usually looks like a pedestal, and is sometimes multicellular, sometimes formed from a single cell. When the pedestal is very short, and the cell supported by it is divided by several radiating divergent septa, which are either oblique or perpendicular to the leaf- surface, tufted hairs (pili fasciculati) are formed. These look like sea-urchins lying on the surface in close proximity to each other; they vary very much in the size, number, length, and direction of their branches, and they are particularly abundant on the cinquefoils (Potentilla cinerea and arenaria), cistus and rock- roses (Cistus and Helianthemum). A common form is represented in fig. 787. When the foot-stalk is very short, and the radiating branch-cells borne by it are 3824 PROTECTIVE ARRANGEMENTS ON THE EPIDERMIS. joined to one another, a star-shaped, ribbed, multicellular plate, indented at the margin, is produced (see fig. 78°). These plates are generally flat, lie level on the surface of the leaf or stem, overlap one another with their indented margins, and cover the green surface of the leaf so completely that it appears to be white instead of green, and invest it with a bright, almost metallic, lustre. Such leaves are said to be “scaly” (epidotus). The best known examples of such leaves, covered with shining silvery hair-scales, are those of Hlwagnus and of the Sea Buckthorns (Hippophaé). If the plates are bent, irregularly fringed, and lustreless, the leaf covered with them looks just as if it were strewn with bits of clay, and is said to be “clayey” (furfuraceus). Examples of this are well shown by the leaf- coverings of many plants allied to the Pine-apple (Bromeliacez). When the top cell of the hair is supported on a moderately high pedestal, and is divided into numerous radiating daughter-cells which diverge from one another, a structure is produced which is somewhat like a knout, or, if the radiating cells are short, like a sea-anemone (Actinia). This form of hair is seen, for example, in the Southern and Eastern European Phlomis, in many mulleins (Verbascum Olympicum), and, with multicellular pedicels, on the leaves of Correa speciosa, an Australian shrub (see fig. 784). Occasionally a branched hair produces several whorls of branches above one another, and then hair-structures are formed which resemble stoneworts (Characez) or miniature fir-trees under the microscope. When many such tiny tree-like hairs are placed close together with interwoven branches, they look under a magnifying-glass like a small plantation, and the analogy is heightened if one- storied tree-shaped hairs, like the undergrowth in a high forest, occur under the higher many-storied ones. This is the case in the Torchweed, Verbascwm thapst- forme, whose hairs are represented in fig. 781. Hair-structures like these appear to the naked eye like flock, and are described as “floccose” hairs (pili jloccosi). Many of these have the peculiar habit of rolling themselves together into small balls, which make the leaf-surface look as if it were bestrewn with coarse white powder. This is the case, for example, in the mullein known as Verbascum veru- lentum. In the crowded condition of stellate and tufted hairs, of branched floccose and unbranched woolly hairs, it is unavoidable that the neighbouring hair-cells should cross one another, intertwine, and be more or less interwoven; and thus arises a felted mass which covers the surface of the organ in question. Such hair-masses are termed “felt” (tomentwm), and the varieties are distinguished as “felted” (or “tomentose ”) stellate or woolly hairs, &. Often the felt only forms a thin loose layer, through which the green of the leaf-surface can be seen; but occasionally it is so thick that the leaf appears snow-white. While in all these cases the covering which protects the leaves and stem of the plant from over-transpiration is woven from air-containing cells, cylindrical and elongated—usually, indeed, very much elongated—in some thick-leaved plants, especially in species of the genus Rochea, a native of the Cape, these cells become vesicular and distended; they are arranged in rank and file adjoining one FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 325 another, so that taken together they form a layer which spreads over the other epidermal cells like a coat of mail. The ordinary epidermal cells are small and only slightly thickened on their outer walls, as shown in the illustration above. The cells which are placed together to form the armour, however, are enlarged in quite an unusual way; their stalk-like base, looking as if wedged in between the ordinary epidermal cells, is indeed comparatively large, but the bladder-like swollen portion exhibits dimensions which are about six hundred times greater than those of the ordinary epidermal cells. The vesicles are closely packed together, and become almost cubical by the mutual pressure they exert on each other. Where a space might occur, the bladders form protuberances and bulgings at the side which fit in together in such a way that a completely closed coat of mail is the result. The expression “coat of mail” is the more justified here since the swollen bladder-like cells of Rochea are as hard as pebbles. Large quantities of silica are present in the cell-walls, and by burning them a complete skeleton in silica can be obtained, as in the case of the silica-coated Diatomacee. It needs no further explanation that in the dry season such a coat of armour affords to the succulent cells it covers an excellent protection against evaporation. There is, however, still another point to be considered. The vesicular swollen cells on fully-grown leaves are still occupied by protoplasm, which forms a thin layer round the walls, while in the centre is a large cavity filled with cell-sap; it is only in older leaves that the bladder-like cells become filled with air. As long as they contain watery cell-sap they serve as reservoirs of water from which the green chlorophyll-bearing cells below can obtain supplies at the periods of greatest drought, when all other sources are exhausted. This fact, that the water-reservoirs are situated on the exterior of the plants, where there exist so many aids to exhala- tion, shows how well the silicified walls of these bladders function. They may be compared to glass vessels whose mouths are directed towards the green tissue, and whose walls allow absolutely no water to pass through. FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. The enlargement of the green leaf-surface has been already explained as a means of increasing transpiration, which is of special importance when the plants con- sidered grow in damp air. Similarly a diminution of the green surface signifies a restriction of transpiration. This relation is illustrated by the fact that in all floral areas, in which the activity of the vegetation is restricted or entirely stopped by increasing dryness, the foliage of the plants is not so widely outspread, 1.e. it under- goes a diminution. It is also a well-known fact that one and the same species, if grown in a dry sunny position, will exhibit_smaller, and in particular, narrower leaves than when_i ee in_ a damp situation. This is well seen in passing from the mountainous districts bordering the Hungarian lowlands to the plains of the lower regions. A number of shrubs and herbs, Anchusa officinalis, Linum hirsutum, Alyssum montanum, Thymus Marschallianus, &e., exhibit on 326 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. the dry sands of the plains much narrower leaves than in the valleys of the moun- tainous regions. In conjunction with the narrowing of the foliage, the wrinkling of the leaves has to be considered, 1.e. the formation of grooved depressions on the sur- face. Strictly speaking, there is no lessening of the whole surface of the leaf, but only of that portion of the surface which is exposed to sun and wind. This is the point with which we are concerned. With regard to the exhalation of water, only the extent of the surface directly influenced by the agents for increasing transpira- tion is to be considered; whilst the extent of the grooved depressions, which are not exposed to the sun’s rays, nor to dry currents of air, may be in a certain measure neglected. On the whole, plants with wrinkled and grooved foliage are not very abundant. For the most part the crumpling is to be seen on quite young leaves when first they break through the bud-scales, and when their epidermal cells are not yet sufficiently thickened with cuticular material. Later, when the formation of the cuticle is advanced, the wrinkles gradually become smooth, and the leaf becomes flat. It has already been pointed out that those pit-like depressions, on the floor of which stomata are concealed (cf. figs. 68 and 73), may also serve to restrict trans- piration. There is no contradiction in the statement that the same structure at one time hinders the entrance of water and the wetting of the stomata at the bottom of the pit, and at another time prevents direct contact with dry winds and consequent over-transpiration. Each has its turn. When the foliage of the Australian Prote- acee, during the summer sleep, is exposed for months to the scorching rays of the sun and to the warm dry air, and when all supplies of water from the soil have ceased, evaporation from the leaves must be restricted as much as possible; it is then that the pit-like depressions perform their duty in this respect. When, later on, the plants are aroused from their long sleep, and have to provide themselves with food, to grow, blossom, and fructify in an extremely short space of time, while violent showers of rain are pouring down from the clouded sky, and all the leaves are dripping with wet; it is then very important that, in spite of these exceedingly unfavourable conditions for evaporation, an abundant transpiration should never- theless take place, and that the function of the stomata should be in no way impaired by the moisture. These pit-like depressions, which in the dry period pre- vented evaporation, now have to keep moisture away from the stomata. In many plants evaporation from the superficial tissue is restricted by the close contact of the leaves to their supports, like the scales on the back of a fish. The upper side of a leaf in contact with the stem, and frequently adhering to it, is thus deprived of the means of exhalation, and transpiration can only take place on the somewhat arched or keeled under side of the green scale-like leaf. This occurs, for example, in the Tree of Life (Arbor vite), in several species of Juniper, in Thujopsis, Libocedrus, and various other Conifers. It is not without interest to notice that in several of these Conifers the little green scale-like leaves only become close pressed to the stem when they are exposed to the sun, whilst vaey, project from it if the branches in question are shaded. FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES, 327 A further reduction of the evaporating surface is brought about by the development of thickened or fleshy leaves. In order to render the points under consideration as clear as possible, it is perhaps well to insert here the following observations. By altering the form of a sheet of lead 8 cms. square and 1 mm. thick into a solid cylinder, the diameter of this cylinder is seen to be only 1 em., and the whole surface of the cylinder is only one-fifth of that of the previous flat sheet. The application of these figures to the tissue of a leaf demonstrates how much smaller is the transpiring surface of a thick cylindrical leaf than of a thin flattened one. Such thickened leaves, which approach more or less to the cylindrical shape, are to be found regularly where transpiration has to be reduced for a considerable time—as, for example, in the mountainous districts of Central and Southern Europe, in the genus Sedum, growing on sandy soil which easily dries up, and on stone walls and battlements (Sedwm albwm, reflecwm, dasyphyllum, atratum, Boloniense, Hispanicum, &e.). They also occur in a striking manner in many tropical orchids which grow on rocks, or epiphytically on the bark of trees in the East Indies, Mexico, and Brazil, exposed for more than six months to great aridity (Brasavola cordata and tuberculata, Dendrobium junceum, Leptotes bicolor, Oncidiwm Cavendishianum and longifolium, Sarcanthus rostratus, Vanda teres, and many others); but especially are they found in aloes and stapelias and species of Cotyledon, Crassula, and Mesembryanthemum, whose habitat is in the dryest districts of the Cape. Several Umbellifere, Composite, and Portulaces (Inula erithmoides, Crithmum maritimum, Talinwm fruticoswm) growing on stony places of the sea-shore in the burning sun, and many salsolas of the deserts and salt steppes, as well as finally some Proteacez, which for two-thirds of the year are exposed to the droughts of Australia—all are characterized by their development of fleshy leaves. Just as thick-leaved plants have acquired their succulence by a modification of their foliage, similarly, in the so-called cactiform plants, it is the stems which become thick and fleshy, and take on the functions of leaves. Here the green tissue is situated in the cortex of the stem, the epidermis covering it contains stomata just like the epidermis of foliage-leaves, and the green cortex transpires, and functions on the whole exactly as the green leaves do. When the stems of the cactiform plants are richly branched and the branches are short, they sometimes much resemble thick-leaved plants. Frequently also the separate portions of the stem and branches take the form of fleshy leaf-like discs, as in the genus of the Prickly-pear (Opuntia), and such stem-structures are usually mis- taken by the uninitiated for thick leaves. Gardeners, as a rule, group the thick- leaved and cactiform plants together under the single term “succulent plants”. To the cactiform plants belong the opuntias and cacti, species of Cereus, Echino- cactus, Melocactus, and Mamillaria, which are distributed from Chili and South Brazil over Peru, Columbia, the Antilles, and Guatemala. These are, however, especially developed on the high plains of Mexico in astonishing variety of form. To the cactiform plants belong also the leafless candelabra-like tree-shaped spurges 328 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. of Africa and the East Indies, These plants are exposed, far more than the thick-leaved plants, for the greater portion of the year to extraordinary dryness. Their usual habitats are dry sandy and stony plains, waste rocky plateaus, and crevices of rocks which are almost completely wanting in soil. They always inhabit regions where no rain falls for about three-fourths of the year, and which usually belong to the driest parts of the earth. The whole organization of these plants corresponds to these conditions of their habitat. Dry scales and hairs are produced instead of foliage-leaves, or these are often metamorphosed into thorns which project in great numbers from the thick stem-structures, and efficiently protect them from the attacks of thirsty animals. The epidermis of the pillar-like, disc- shaped, or spherical stem-portions is thickened on the outer wall, so as to almost resemble cartilage, and frequently it forms a coat of mail round the deeper-lying green tissue by the abundant deposition of oxalate of lime (as much as 85 per cent). Most of the succulent plants, whose cell-walls, which are in contact with the air, are fortified by oxalate of lime, silicic acid, or suberin, have in their tissue peculiar aggregates of cells which apparently serve for the storing-up of water for the dry season, and which have been termed “aqueous tissue”. The water in these reser- voirs is always so apportioned that it lasts from one rainy season to another; that is to say, the adjoining green tissue which exhales the stored-up water does not suffer from drought during the dry season. Also, it is contrived in these plants that, immediately after the fall of the first rain, the reservoirs are again filled with water, and that the emptying and filling of the cells and the decrease and increase of their volume exercise no harmful influence on the adjoining tissue. Succulent plants have been not inaptly compared to camels, the “ships of the desert”, which provide themselves with a large quantity of water, and are then able to dispense with further supplies for a long time without injury. The cells of the aqueous tissue are comparatively large and their walls thin; the active protoplasm within forms a delicate layer round the walls—that is to say, a sac whose cavity is filled with watery, often somewhat mucilaginous, fluid. In the cactuses the aqueous tissue is hidden as much as possible in the interior of the thick rod-shaped or spherical stem; also in many thick-leaved plants, such as some of the European species of the genus Sedum (eg. Sedum album, dasyphyllum, glawecwm); in South African species of the genera Aloé and Mesembryanthemum (eg. Mesembry- anthemum blandum, foliosum, sublacerwm), the aqueous tissue is concealed in the interior of the leaf, and is usually composed of cells surrounding vascular bundles there situated. In Sedum Telephium, known by the name of Orpine, as well as in species of House-leek (Sempervivum), and many salsolas growing on steppes, the ramifications of the vascular bundles are enveloped in a mantle of green tissue, and the bundles, which are, as it were, overlaid with green cells, are so arranged with regard to the colourless aqueous tissue, that to the naked eye they look like green strands in a transparent matrix which is as clear as water. In the Mexican Echeverias the aqueous tissue is inserted as broad stripes’ in the green tissue, and in the thick-leaved orchids it appears as if sprinkled between the green FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 329 cells. The epidermis in numerous other thick-leaved plants serves as a store-house for water in a marvellous way. Individual epidermal cells are then greatly enlarged and project beyond the others in the form of sacs, clubs, or bladders, as shown in the picture of Rochea (fig. 79). These bladders either fit together into a one-layered extended coat of armour, or they are frequently placed irregularly side by side or above one another. In some instances they form isolated groups or occur singly, and appear then to the naked eye like protuberances on the green stems and leaves, where they glitter and sparkle in the sunshine like an embroidery of dew- drops. Many leaves and branches—as, for example, those of the widely-distributed Ice-plant (Mesembryanthemum cristallinwm)—have the greatest resemblance to candied fruit covered with clear, colourless, sparkling sugar crystals. When the walls of the enormously-distended vesicular or bladder-shaped cells of the epidermis are silicified, as are those of the repeatedly-mentioned Rochea, it is easily understood that the watery cell-sap which they contain is not exhaled into the air; the fluid is, so to speak, inclosed in a glass bottle and can only be given off in the direction of the green tissue. But when the walls of the bladder-like giant cells are not silicified, and not even particularly thickened, what is the result? From the aspect of the Ice-plant one would think that a single warm dry day would suffice to shrivel and dry up the watery vesicles. But this is certainly not the case. Leafy twigs cut from the Ice-plant may be left all day on the dry ground in dry air and sunshine, and the large bladder-like cells on the surface will not lose their aqueous contents. After a week they become collapsed, having given up their water, not to the atmosphere, but to the green tissue covered by this swollen coat. Without doubt this phenomenon is to be associated with a peculiar formation of the cell-wall; but it is as certain that the constituents of the cell-sap, which fills the vesicles are also important, and it must be assumed that substances are dissolved in this aqueous fluid which restrict the evaporation of the water. These substances, which hold water with great energy, and thereby enable the plants in question to survive through periods of the greatest dryness, are partly viscous, gummy, and resinous fluids, partly salts. It is well known that the sticky, watery pulp of crushed mistletoe berries, used in the manufacture of “bird-lime”, may be exposed to the air for months without quite drying up, and the mucilaginous juices of many cactuses and thick-leaved plants behave in a similar manner, espe- cially those of the Cape aloes, which exhale no water, and enable the plants possessing them to withstand the drought for months. In the thick-leaved plants of the salt steppes and deserts, the fluids are rarely resinous or gummy, but they frequently contain a surprising quantity of salts dissolved in water, such as common salt, chloride of magnesium, and the like; and these also obstinately retain water in proportionately large quantities. It is one of the most surprising of phenomena to see the thick-leaved salsolas rising above the soil of salt steppes, green and succu- lent, when the ground is at its driest in the height of summer, when for months no clouds have tempered the sun’s rays and not a drop of rain has fallen, and when almost all other plants have long ago turned yellow and faded. The large amount it 330 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. of salts contained in the sap of these plants renders them capable of a resistance which is almost greater than that afforded by mucilaginous materials and gum-resins. It must, however, be remarked here that not all green leaf- or stem-cells contain- ing abundant water have the function of storing it up for a dry season, and that the aqueous cell-groups and strands adjoining the green tissue, especially the so-called outer aqueous tissue, in very many cases, has another important function, viz. the conducting of carbonie acid to places where it can be assimilated, but this will be described in the next chapter. ‘An extreme reduction of the leaf-surface, combined with a formation of green transpiring tissue in the cortex of the stem, is also shown in another group of plants known by the name of “Switch” plants. They are characterized by thin rod- shaped stems and branches, while the cactiform plants, on the contrary, always have their axes but little branched, and massive, thickened, fleshy and rigid stem-struc- tures which are unaffected by the wind. The switch-plants may be subdivided into those which are flexible, hollow, and only slightly branched—as, for example, the horse-tails (auisetwm), reeds (Scirpus), rushes (Juncus), bog-rushes (Schenus), and several cyperuses (Cyperus); and into broom-like shrubs with rigid woody boughs breaking up into innumerable branches and twigs. The former are distributed over the whole world; the latter are principally to be found in Australia and in districts bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. In Australia it is chiefly Casuarinas and some genera of Papilionacee and Santalacee (Sphewrolobium, Viminaria, Lepto- meria, Hxocarpus) which take on this odd form, and some of them even attain to the size of trees. In the Mediterranean flora isolated species and groups from the families of Asparaginez, Polygalacez, and Resedacew are seen with thin, stiff, rod- shaped, leafless branches, which project stiffly into the air with green cortex; but again, most of. these plants belong to the Papilionaces and Santalacese. Several switch-plants of the papilionaceous genera Retama, Genista, Cytisus, and Spartiwm, growing together, often cover wide tracts of country in densely-crowded masses, and thus contribute not a little to the scenic peculiarity of the district. Many small rocky islands off the coast of Istria are entirely overgrown by Spartiwm scoparium, which is represented in the illustration opposite. In May large golden flowers, scented like acacias, appear on the green rods of the Broom, and then for a short time the dark green of the switch-plant is changed into a brilliant yellow. On passing near the coast, just at this time, the remarkable phenomenon is seen of golden yellow islands rising above the dark blue sea. This floral adornment is, however, but transitory, and nothing more monotonous and desolate than such a dry unwatered islet, covered with these shrubs, can be imagined The Spartiwm belongs to those switch-plants which are not entirely leafless, but which develop little green lancet-shaped leaves at intervals on their long twigs. But these are of such secondary importance that their green tissue can only form the smallest portion of the organic substances necessary to the further growth of the plants, and this duty chiefly falls to the share of the cortex of the switch-like branches. The cortex is also characteristically formed in accordance with this fact. FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 331 Under the epidermis, whose outer walls are much thickened and coated with wax, is the green transpiring tissue or “ chlorenchyma”, consisting of from five to seven rows of cells. This green tissue does not form a continuous mantle round the stem, but is divided into from ten to fifteen thick strands by strips of hard bast (see fig. 81). Below this cortex of alternating green tissue and strips of bast are soft bast, cambium, wood, and a very large pith; but these have no further interest for us here. It is, however, worthy of remark that in the green strands of the cortex AIT p87) nS = SSS Fig. 80.—Switch-plants. fated Bushes of Spartium scoparium near Rovigno in Istria. of the Spartiwm, the crowded green chlorophyll-containing cells of the chlorenchyma closely adjoin one another, and that only very narrow air-passages ramify between them, so that here there is no formation of a spongy parenchyma penetrated by wide canals and passages. On the other hand, large cavities occur where the green tissue touches the epidermis, and these act as substitutes for the wide ramifying canals. Over each of the cavities a stoma is to be seen in the epidermis through which the water vapour, exhaled chiefly from the green cells, can escape (see fig. 812). The stomata are proportionately small, but their number is very great. Since the guard-cells are not so strongly thickened on their outer walls as are the other epidermal cells, the stomata appear to be somewhat sunken. By this arrange- ment, and also by the epidermal coating of wax, they are protected from moisture. 332 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. In the Casuarinese and in Oytisus radiatus (see fig. 69), the green tissue is distri- puted in the cortex of the branches exactly as in the case just described; but the strips of green tissue traversing the stem are deeply cut into by longitudinal furrows. In some other leafless switch-shrubs, such as species of the genus Ephedra, the chlorenchyma forms a continuous and uniform mantle round the stem, uninterrupted by strips of bast. But in this case the stomata are distributed uniformly over the whole surface of the rod-shaped branches, while in the brooms, Casuarinex, and in Cytisus radiatus they are absent from those portions of the epidermis which cover the strips of hard bast. Plants with leaf-like branches or cladodes are distinguished from switch-plants Fig. 81.—Switch-shrubs. 1 Part of stem of Spartium scoparium cut transversely; x30. 2 Part of the transverse section; x240. ‘by the fact that all their shoots are not circular in section, but some are flattened, looking as though they had been pressed out. When this flattening is restricted to the so-called “short branches”, i.e. when on a stem only the ultimate, comparatively short branches are flattened, the main axes remaining cylindrical, like ordinary stalks, these structures have quite the appearance of leaves which are sessile on the rounded stems. This explanation of them, however, given by botanists, is not at first sight satisfactory to the uninitiated. Why should these flat green structures be branches, and not leaves? The illustration opposite at once makes the matter clear. It represents two cladode-bearing plants, viz. two species of Butcher’s-broom (Ruscus Hypoglossum and aculeatus), each at an early stage of development and also when fully grown. On the young shoots, which have just made their way out of the soil (see figs. 827 and 82%), the true leaves can be seen in the shape of small sessile pale seales on the long, rounded, finely-ridged axis; and from the angles which these scales make with the long axis arise darker, much thicker organs which rapidly increase in size, while the supporting covering-scales become dry, shrivel up, and finally FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 333 disappear, leaving no traces. Since the members which arise from the axils of leaves (whether these are small clothing-scales, or large green laminz does not matter) are not considered to be leaves, but shoots, the flat leaf-like structures of the Butcher’s-broom are also regarded as shoots, and are named “flattened shoots” (cladodes)—or, considering their similarity to leaves, “leaf-branches ” (phylloclades). Fig. 82.—Plants with Leaf-like Branches (Cladodes). 1 Young shoot of Ruscus Hypoglossum. 2 The same branch fully grown, with flowers on the cladodes. 8 Young shoot of Ruscus aculeatus. * The same branch with flowers on the cladodes. This view is strengthened materially by the fact that these leaf-like structures, in their further development, and in the production of shoots, behave exactly like ordinary cylindrical axes. That is to say, small scale-like leaves spring from them, and from the axils of these scales arise stalked flowers (see figs. 82® and 82 *) which ultimately fructify. Plants possessing such phylloclades are not very numerous on 334 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. the whole. The Butcher’s-brooms, chosen above as examples, belong to Southern Europe, and occur in large quantities on the soil of dry woods, where everything is wrapped in deep sleep during the height of summer. In the Antilles, and in the prairies of the East Indies, are about twenty shrub-like species, belonging to the genus Phyllanthus of the Spurge-family. New Zealand also possesses one of these peculiar phyllocladous plants, belonging to the papilionaceous genus Car- michelia. In the species of both these genera (see fig. 83) the flattened shoots are exceedingly like lancet-shaped foliage-leaves, and the true leaves are transformed into small pale scales. These tiny scales are situated on the margins of the phylloclades, and from their axils arise stalks bearing the flowers and fruit. On the Andes of South America occur the remarkable colletias, of which a species, Colletia cruciata, is represented in fig. 83. The leaflets on these extraordinary shrubs are diminutive, but not pale and scale-like; whilst the green phylloclades, which play the part of the foliage-leaves, form very strong flattened organs, tapering to a point, and placed opposite one another in pairs, so that each pair is always at right angles to the couple next above or below. Yet another arrangement is seen in Coccoloba platyclada (Polygonaces), a native of the Salomon Islands, and in Cocculus Balfourii, growing in the island of Socotra. But it is impossible here to enter into all these variations in detail; it is enough to have brought forward the most striking forms of phyllocladous plants which are represented in figs. 82 and 83. If in all these peculiar plants the branches are flattened and spread out, it cannot indeed be asserted that the surface of their transpiring tissue has undergone diminution, and thus far of course this strange development has nothing to do with the restriction of transpiration. The arrangement by which this is brought about must be sought for elsewhere. It consists in this: the leaf-like shoots are so directed that their surfaces are vertical and not horizontal. Contrary to most flat leaves, which turn their broad surfaces fully to the incident light, the flattened shoots are placed vertically so that at mid-day they only cast a very narrow shadow, and do not stop the sunbeams on their way to the soil. It is obvious, however, that such a leaf-like structure placed vertically, as it were on edge, will exhale much less than a foliage-leaf whose surface is opposed to the mid-day sunbeams. The work carried on in the green cells, under the influence of light, is not hindered by this position of the leaf-like organs. If the vertical green surfaces are not so well illuminated by the sun’s rays during the warmest part of the day, this is abundantly compensated for by the fact that their broad surfaces are exposed to the light both of the morning and evening sun. On the other hand, when the sun rises and sets, the heat is not so powerful, and consequently there is no such rapid exhalation to be feared as when the sun is in the zenith. To put the matter shortly, transpiration alone—not illumination—is restricted by the vertical position of the green lamina, and therefore this metamorphosis has rightly been considered a protective measure against excessive transpiration, This arrangement is only found in plants of dry regions, where transpiration FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 335 requires no assistance, but where, on the contrary, the danger is often imminent that water cannot be drawn from the soil in sufficient quantity to replace that lost by exhalation. The phylloclades, moreover, are only a type of a large number of organs which, in a word, all agree in this; the edge or narrow side of the flattened exhaling structure, not the broad surface, is turned towards the zenith. In many of the KG Fig. 83.—Plants with Leaf-like Branches (Cladodes). 1 Colletia cruciat 2 Carmichelia australis. % Phyllanthus speciosus. vetches of the Southern European flora (Lathyrus Nissolia, Ochrus), but especially in a large number of Australian shrubs and trees, principally acacias (Acacia longi- folia, falcata, myrtifolia, armata, cultrata, Melanoxylon, decipiens, &c.), it is the leaf-stalks which are extended like leaves placed vertically, and then the develop- ment of the leaf-lamina is either entirely arrested, or has the appearance of an appen- dage at the apex of the flat green leaf-stalk, or “ phyllode”, as it is called. In many Myrtaceee and Proteacez, especially in species of the genera Lucalyptus, Leucaden- 336 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. dron, Melaleuca, Protea, Banksia, and Grevillea, the leaf-blades themselves are not placed horizontally like those of our maples, elms, beeches, and oaks, but vertically on edge, like the phylloclades and phyllodes. Imagine now an entire wood of such eucalypti and acacias, on which the mid-day sun is pouring down its rays. If it is not exactly literally true to say that each vertical leaf only casts a linear shadow at noon, it is at least certain that there is not much shade on the ground of such a wood. The sunbeams find their way everywhere between the erect leaf-blades, penetrating the depths below, and it is impossible to speak of the dim forest-light under such circumstances. The Casuarinex, which grow with eucalyptus, acacias, and Proteacez do not help to make such woods shady. and thus one is quite justified in speaking of the shadowless forests of Australia. Although Australia stands alone in the variety and abundance of its plants possessing vertical leaf-blades, other floral areas furnish numerous and remarkable examples of this arrangement. One has only to think of the curious shape of the so-called “equitant” leaves belonging to many plants of the Daffodil family (Tofieldia, Nartheciwm), numerous irises, and the closely-related genera, Gladiolus, Ferraria, Witsenia, Montbretia, &e., chiefly natives of the Cape. The leaves exhibit the peculiarity of being folded together lengthwise, and the sides thus brought into contact become fused to one another. Only at the point where they join the stem do the two halves remain distinct, forming a groove in which is inserted the base of an upper leaf. The formation of such equitant leaves from ordinary leaf-blades may perhaps be illustrated by taking a strip of paper smeared on one side with paste and folding it longitudinally so that the pasted sides are in contact and become joined together. Such equitant leaves are so directed that their broad surfaces are much less exposed to the perpendicular rays of the mid-day than to those of the rising and setting sun. In the Mediterranean fiora, and on many steppes, plants are not seldom to be met with whose leaves look as if they had not been able to free themselves from the stem. In such plants the projecting portion of the foliage-leaf is very small, but the margins are continued for some way down the stem as projecting strips and wings. Leaves of this kind are termed “decurrent”. They are particularly abundant amongst Composites, viz. in the genera Centawrea, Inula, Helichrysum; but they also occur in many Papilionaceous plants and Labiates. The position of these vertical wings, which traverse the stem, is exactly the same, with regard to the sun, as that of the phyllodes, phylloclades, and equitant leaves, and they behave in respect to transpiration in exactly the same way. In many plants the blades of the foliage-leaves when young have not a vertical position, but gradually assume it during development, i.e. the blades at first are turned so that the flattened surfaces are horizontal and face upwards and downwards. Later they twist round at the point where they are inserted on the stem, so that their margins become directed upwards and downwards. As already stated, this peculiarity is observed in many eucalypti and various other Australian trees and shrubs. But plants in sunny situations in other regions also exhibit this FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES, 337 peculiarity. In the Spanish flora, for example, is an Umbellifer (Buplewrum verticale) whose leaves are so twisted with regard to the sun that they remind one forcibly of the Australian acacias. Many Composites, especially the widely-distri- buted Wild Lettuce (Lactuca Scariola), growing on dry soil in Central Europe > Fig. 84.—Com pass Plants. 1Silphium laciniatum, seen from the east. 2 The same plant seen from the south. % Lactuca Scariola, seen from the east. 4 The same plant from the south. Both species are considerably reduced. ‘ exhibit this contrivance in a striking manner. A Composite shrub, Silphiwm. laciniatum, to be found in the prairies of North America, from Michigan and Wisconsin as far south as Alabama and Texas, has obtained a certain renown by reason of the remarkable twisting of its leaf-blades. It long astonished hunters. in the prairies that in these plants (represented in fig. 84) the leaf-laminz, especially those springing from the lowest portions of the stem, not only assumed a vertical Vou. I. 22 338 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. position, but that the broad surfaces of each leaf always faced the rising and setting sun. Healthy living plants as they’grow in the sunny meadows look as though they had been laid between two gigantic sheets of paper, somewhat pressed, and dried for some time in the way plants are prepared for herbariums, and had then been removed from the press and set up so that the apex and profile of the vertical leaf-blades point north and south, i.e. in the meridian; while their surfaces face the east and west. This inclination is so well and regularly observed by the living plants on the prairies, that hunters are enabled to guide themselves over such regions, even under a clouded sky, by means of these plants; for this reason Sil- phiwm laciniatwm has been called a “compass” plant. The life of the compass plant is assisted by this placing of the vertical leaves in the meridian, in that the broad surfaces are placed almost at right angles to the incident sunbeams which illuminate them in the cool and relatively damp morning and evening, while at the same time they are not too strongly heated nor stimulated to excessive transpiration. At mid-day, on the other hand, when the sun’s rays only fall on the profile of the leaves, the heating and transpiration are proportionately slight. It is of interest that the leaves of these compass plants, as well as those of the above-mentioned Lettuce represented with the compass plant in fig. 84, show this inclination and position when they grow on level, moderately dry, unshaded ground, and that in damp shady places, where there is no danger of over-transpiration from the powerful rays of the noon-tide sun, the twisting of the leaves does not take place, and they are not brought into the meridian. The placing of their leaf-blades parallel to the ground when in the shade, but vertically when in dry sunny places, is, generally speaking, a phenomenon which may be seen in very many plants, including shrubs and trees. A species of lime, a native of Southern Europe, viz. the Silver Lime (Tilia argentea), is particularly noticeable in this respect. On dry hot summer days the leaves assume an almost vertical position, but only on those boughs and twigs which are exposed to the sun. If the tree stands at the foot of a wall of rock, or on the edge of a thick wood, so that a portion of it is shaded, the leaves on this shaded part remain extended horizontally. Such a tree then presents a strange aspect, as the leaves are of two colours—dark green on the upper side, and white on the under surface by reason of a fine felt-work of white stellate hairs—and it is scarcely credible at first sight that the shaded and sunny portions of the tree belong to one another. In the compass plants and also in the Silver Lime the alterations in the direction of the leaves are brought about by alterations in the turgidity of certain groups of cells in the leaf-stalk. It is exactly the same cause which produces the periodic movements of numberless plants with pinnate or palmate leaves, and the leaf-folding of many grasses; and it is natural to conjecture that these phenomena of movement are also connected with transpiration. This is in part actually the case. In consequence of alterations in turgidity of the pulvini, the pinnate leaflets of the Gleditschias and some Mimosas rise up after sunset, while those of the Amor- phas fall down, and assume a vertical position during the night; but this is con- FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 339 nected with the nocturnal radiation of heat (as will be explained later) and not with exhalation. It is, however, equally certain that the placing together and folding up of leaves and leaflets in many other plants is brought about in order to prevent over-transpiration and consequent withering up. Many shrubby, thorny mimosas of Brazil and Mexico, when in their native habitat and position, extend their leaflets horizontally when evening approaches, contrary to the behaviour of the well-known Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica), and they remain in this position throughout the night. Next morning they are still widely outspread. As soon as the sun has risen, and its beams fall on the foliage, the leaflets shut together; the menacing thorns, which until now have been hidden by the extended leaves, become apparent; and the leaflets remain in the vertical position during the hottest and driest hours of the day. Towards sunset they again rise and are extended horizontally. There is but one exception to this cycle of changes—if the opened leaf is shaken by the wind, and if the sky has been gray and clouded all day. In the former case, under the influence of the wind, a rapid closure occurs; in the latter case, when the weather is bad, they remain open all day: One of the Rutacer, Porliera hygrometrica, behaves like these mimosas. In Peru, the native country of these plants, where they abound, the opening and closing of the leaves has even been made use of for weather predictions, for when the vertical leaves are closed, dry hot weather can be reckoned upon; when they are open, damp cool weather. In the cultivated Bean (Phaseolus), moreover, alterations of position in parts of the leaflets may be observed to take place during the day. When the sun is powerful, the leaflets assume a vertical position, so that at noon the sun’s rays only reach a small portion of the blade. In several species of Wood-sorrel belonging to the South African flora, and also in the widely-distributed Common Wood-sorrel (Oxalis Acetosella), it may be noticed that the leaflets, as soon as they are directly struck by the sun’s rays, sink down, so that their under surfaces—qn which the stomata are situated—face one another, the three leaflets together forming a pyramid; while these same leaflets in damp shady places remain extended. The leaflets of the water fern, Mar'silea quadrifolia, which grows in marshes and is distributed through Central and Southern Europe, temperate Asia, and North America, are very similar to those of the Wood-sorrel, but carry their stomata on the upper surface. As long as they remain floating on the surface of water, these leaflets are extended, but as soon as the water-level sinks and the leaflets become surrounded by air, they fold together above in the sunshine, and their position becomes vertical, precisely as in the compass plants. As another phenomenon of this kind the periodic folding or closing of the leaves of grasses must be specially mentioned. It has long been noticed that certain grasses exhibit a very different aspect according as they are observed on a dewy morning or in the noon-day sunshine. In the morning their long linear leaves are fluted on the upper surface, or spread out quite flat. As soon as the humidity of the air diminishes, in consequence of the higher position of the sun, they fold 340 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. together lengthwise; again after sunset they widen and become flat or fluted. This process may be repeated twice on a summer's day within twenty-four hours, if a storm intervenes at mid-day and is followed by a sunny afternoon. How much this depends upon the conditions of humidity of the air, is demonstrated by the fact that such grasses, when grown in pots, can be easily made to open and close their leaves by alternately sprinkling them with water and placing in damp air, and then for a short time exposing them to dry air. The leaf-folding in various species of Sesleria is exceedingly quick and also very interesting. The species of this genus grow principally on the Alps, Carpathians, and Balkans. They always grow together and often cover wide stretches of hilly and elevated districts with thick grassy turf. One species (Sesleria cerulea) is distributed over Northern Europe in Finland, Sweden, and England. The closing of the leaves of these moor- grasses reminds one strongly of the Venus Fly-trap (Dionwa muscipula), which has already been fully described. It is indeed an actual shutting together of the two halves of the leaf. As in the leaf of the “Fly-trap”, the midrib of the leaf of the Sesleria remains in its original position unaltered; also the two halves of the leaf do not come flatly in contact, but rise up obliquely so as to leave between them a deep, narrow, groove-like cavity, widest at its lowest part (see fig. 85”). While the open leaf turns its upper surface, rich in stomata, towards the sky, the two raised halves of the folded leaf are parallel with the incident sunbeams, and the folded leaf of the moor-grass may then be compared to the equitant leaf of an iris. In the cavity produced by the closing up of the leaf are the stomata, however, and thus the green tissue next them is excellently protected from the sun’s rays as well as from the direct action of the wind. The epidermis of the lower surface, which is exposed on the folded leaf to all the agencies which excite transpiration, possesses no stomata, but is provided with a thick cuticle. A leaf-folding similar to that of Sesleria, along the midrib, has been observed in the leaves of Avena planiculmis, which grows in sunny fields on the Sudetics and Carpathians. It also occurs in Avena compressa, and many others related to these species. The folding or closing of the leaves in the large section of fescue-grasses (Festuca) is carried on somewhat differently. In Sesleria, the opened upper sur- face of the leaf forms only a single shallow groove, and the folding only occurs at the midrib; but on the upper side of the fescue-grass leaf several parallel grooves are to be seen, and the green tissue is divided up by these grooves into several pro- jecting ridges, exhibiting a very remarkable structure. In each ridge can be dis- tinguished the base which forms a part of the under side of the whole leaf; then the apex opposite the base, belonging to the upper surface of the entire leaf; and finally, the two side portions forming the sloping sides of the grooves which run between the ridges (see figs. 87 and 88). The greater part of each ridge consists of green tissue. The stomata on the ridge only open on the sloping sides facing the grooves. Neither the crests of the ridges nor the lower surface of the leaf exhibit a single stomate. The apex is without chlorophyll, and almost always has a border of elongated cells with strong elastic FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 341 walls under the epidermis; the same thing occurs on the under side of the leaf (1.2. at the base of the ridges), which is formed of one or several layers of cells without chlorophyll, but furnished with thickened walls. The closing of the leaf is not so simple here as in the Seslerias. There the leaf-folding only produced a single deep channel, widened at its base; in the fescue-grasses all the small grooves between the ridges become narrowed by the closing, i.e. by the upward inclination of the right and left halves of the leaf, those adjoining the central ridge to the greatest Fig. 85.—Folding of Grass-leaves. 1 Vertical section through an open leaf of the thin-leaved Moor-grass (Sesleria tenuifolia). 2 Vertical section through a closed leaf; x40. 4% Portion from the centre of an open leaf; x300. extent, those in the neighbourhood of the approximated margins in a lesser degree (see fig. 887). Since the stomata lie on the sides of the ridges, it is obvious that transpiration is checked to the utmost by the closing and consequent approximation of the opposite sides of each groove. In individual cases among various fescue-grasses are to be found manifold differences in the number and shape of the ridges, also with respect to the formation of the under surface of the leaf, and most of all in the form assumed by the leaf in its expanded condition. There is a large group of festucas which are said to be poisonous by the shepherds in the mountain regions of Spain, and in the Alps, the Taurus, and the Elbruz. These will be spoken of again later. When open in damp weather they form only a moderately narrow main furrow, with several 342 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. narrow secondary grooves leading from it, as can be seen in a vertical section of an open leaf of Festuca alpestris, a plant very abundant in the Southern Alps (see fig. 865). In Festuca alpestris, the blunt apex of each ridge has a border, three layers deep, of cells destitute of chlorophyll, and the lower side of the leaf is pro- vided with an actual armour of thick-walled bast cells, covered by an epidermis, 7 o 2 Fig. 86.—Folding of Grass-leaves. 1 Vertical section through part of the open leaf of Stipa capillata; x240. 2 Vertical section through an entire open leaf. 3 Vertical section through a closed leaf; x30. 4 Vertical section through a portion of the leaf of Festuca alpestris; x 210. 5 Vertical section through an entire open leaf. 6 Vertical section through a closed leaf; x30. whose outer walls are much thickened. A vertical section through the leaf of Festuca punctoria, a native of the Taurus, is represented in fig. 88. In this plant, the leaves, when open, present a fairly shallow depression; the under surface is clothed with a protective mantle of five layers of strong cells devoid of chloro- phyll; the ridges are rounded off and possess only a single layer of covering cells, provided with an extremely strong wax-like coat. The open leaves of Festuca Porcit, FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 343 a native of the Carpathians, are relatively thin (see figs. 874 and 875). Below the epidermis of the under side is no mantle of bast cells as in the species already described, but only isolated strands of bast; however, the crest of each ridge is furnished with a strand of bast cells ; the ridges themselves project very much, and the whole leaf is traversed by six deep narrow grooves. In the three fescue-grasses cited here as examples, and in all species of the genus Festuca, forming the main part of the turf of our fields, a vascular bundle Ke Je dit Fig. 87.—Folding of Grass-leaves. 1 Vertical section through a closed leaf of Lasiagrostis Calamagrostis. % Vertical section through an open leaf; x24. 3 Vertical section through a portion of the open leaf; x210. 4 Vertical section through a closed leaf of Festuca Porcit. § Vertical section through an open leaf; x24. 6 Vertical section through a portion of the open leaf; x210. surrounded by green tissue traverses each ridge. In the hinged leaves of many other grasses, the green tissue of each ridge is divided into two portions. The vascular bundle is bordered above and below by strands of thick-walled cells devoid of chlorophyll, and thus arises a strong septum in the green parenchyma, beautifully shown in the transverse section of a leaf of Lasiagrostis Calamagrostis, illustrated in fig. 87. In the leaves of the Feather-grass (Stipa capillata) are alternating higher and lower ridges; a vertical section is shown in fig. 86+2% In the higher ridges oceur septa similar to those in Lasiagrostis, but in the lower there is only a vas- cular bundle surrounded by green tissue as in the fescue-grasses. No less than 344 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. twenty-nine ridges can be counted on the leaf of the above-mentioned Lasiagrostis, a plant widely distributed in the valleys of the Western and Southern Alps, where it clothes the sunny slopes in thick masses. When the leaf folds up, the twenty- eight grooves between the ridges, on whose sides are the stomata, become narrowed, and the entire leaf assumes a tubular form, so that transpiration is almost com- pletely suspended. In Stipa capillata, which is very abundant on clay steppes, the same thing occurs (see fig. 862). In both grasses the closure of the grooves on whose sides are the stomata, is completed by short stiff hairs on the summit of the ridges, which interlock when the ridges approach one another, and so block up access to the grooves (fig. 86%). It would take us much too far to describe the numerous other modifications which are to be met with in the structure of hinged grass-leaves. The examples given suffice to make it evident that the danger of over-transpiration is avoided by the folding of the leaf, and that amongst the grasses very many arrangements obtain in order, sometimes, to expose those green parts of the leaf whose epidermis is supplied with stomata to the rays of the sun, and at other times to withdraw them, according to the humidity of the soil and of the surrounding air, thus suitably regulating transpiration to the existing circumstances. The mechanism by which grass-leaves open and close may be explained in two ways—either the process is due to hygroscopic changes, as in the opening and clos- ing of the “ Rose of Jericho ’, or to alterations in the turgidity of certain groups of cells, as in the mimosas. If the former alone were the case, a dry, dead grass-leaf should be still capable of opening and closing in accordance with its damp or dry condition; but a leaf of any of these when cut off and dried no longer opens, even after being moistened for a considerable time, and therefore the first explanation cannot be accepted, at any rate for most of the grasses. Apparently, the mechanism consists of alterations in the turgescence of those groups of cells situated in the angle of the grooves. Since the floor of the grooves was frequently found to con- sist of peculiar thin-walled cells destitute of chlorophyll, and filled with colourless watery sap, it was concluded that the opening and closing of the grass-leaves was due to the change in turgidity of these cells. However, this was going too far. These cells in most instances, for example, in Festuca punctoria (see fig. 88 *), would be much too delicate to effect, unaided, the closure of the leaf by their loss of turgidity, or to open it by their increasing turgescence. In many grasses these cells are completely wanting (eg. in Festuca alpestris and Stipa capillata, fig. 86). Moreover, it is observed that the opening and closing of the leaf is still carried on when the thin-walled cells at the bottom of the grooves are destroyed, artificially, by puncturing with fine needles. The cause of the movement must therefore be looked for in the alteration of turgescence of other cells below the grooves. When a mantle of several layers of thick-walled cells is present on the under side of the leaf, their walls are seen to swell up simultaneously with the alterations of tur- gescence of the parenchymatous cells. Of course the inner cell-layers of the mantle must be capable of swelling up to a greater extent than the outer, and this has FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. 345 actually been shown to be the case in some species. Moreover, although the thin- walled cells at the bottom of the furrows are not considered strong enough to bring about the opening and closing by changes in their turgidity alone, it is by no means asserted that they have no other part to play. When they are constructed as in the leaves of the moor-grasses and in the fescue-grass of the Taurus (Festuca punctoria, figs. 85 and 88), they certainly are not without a purpose. Their advan- tage to the plant lies in the fact that they can be much compressed without harm by the closure of the leaf, whereby the neighbouring parenchymatous cells are pro- Fig. 88.—Folding of Grass-leaves, 1 Vertical section through an open leaf of Festuca punctoria, of the Taurus. 2 Vertical section through a closed leaf; x40. 3 Vertical section through a portion of the open leaf; x 280. tected from injury; also that by means of these cells, which are filled with watery sap, carbonic acid from the atmosphere is conducted to the underlying green tissue; and lastly, that in case of necessity, water can be absorbed from the air. They re- mind one strongly of the thin-walled groups of cells of foliage-leaves used for the direct absorption of moisture, and possibly they can function in this way. If, in places where these grasses grow naturally, a slight shower of rain falls after a long period of drought, or if dew falls during clear nights, little or none of the water reaches the roots, since it is retained by leaves overspreading the soil. But the water easily runs into the furrows of the folded leaves of grass, and since the large thin-walled cells at the bottom of the grooves can be wetted, they offer to the water which can pass through them the shortest path to the green cells in the interior of the leaf. 346 FORM AND POSITION OF THE TRANSPIRING LEAVES AND BRANCHES. A process, very similar to the opening and closing of grass-leaves, is also to be observed in the true mosses, in all species of the genus Polytrichwm, and in some of the Barbulas. The peculiar structure of the leaves of these mosses has been already treated of. In addition to the description there given, it may be mentioned that the ridges of thin-walled green cells, which are present on the upper surface of such a leaf (see fig. 89), only remain exposed to currents of air as long as this air possesses the requisite degree of humidity; that is to say, the blade of the leaf from whose upper surface the bands project only remains expanded while that is the case (fig. 89?). As soon as the air becomes dry, the lateral portions of the leaf-blade bend upwards, and envelop the green ridges like a mantle (fig. 89+). These are then Fig. 89.—Folding of Moss-leaves. _ Transverse sections through the leaf of a Polytrichum (Polytrichum commune), 1 The leaf dry and folded. 2 The leaf damp and open; x85. inclosed in a hollow chamber, and only retain communication with the surrounding air by a narrow slit above, which is left open between the inflected leaf-margins. But here again it should be noticed that the highest cells in each ridge are strongly thickened on the part turned towards the opening, which doubtless helps to lessen transpiration. The opening and closing of the Polytrichum takes place very rapidly. By repeated hygrometric changes in the air, the process may be performed naturally several times ina single day. In Polytrichacee, which have been plucked while their leaves were open, the closure is seen to be completed, in dry air, in a few minutes. Dead and withered leaves are always closed, and never reopen, even when kept damp for a long time—from which it may be concluded that the mechanism of the opening and closing cannot be due toa simple hygroscopic phenomenon. Probably, the same mechanical forces come into action as produce the folding of leaves of grasses; but the process in moss-leaves is much more complicated, since it consists, not merely in the upward inclination of the leaf-edges, but also in an upward curva- ture and spiral twisting of the whole leaf. OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES, 347 4. TRANSPIRATION DURING VARIOUS SEASONS OF THE YEAR. TRANSPIRATION OF LIANES. Old and Young Leaves.—Fall of the Leaf.—Connection between the structure of the Vascular Tissues and Transpiration. OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES. The various regulators of transpiration, hitherto described, either persist in the plant-organs in question throughout life, or only remain for a comparatively short time. They are present throughout life in evergreen leaves, particularly in regions where wet and dry seasons alternate during the year. In this case the plants require powerful aids to transpiration in the rainy season, and in the dry season abundance of protective measures against excessive loss of water. Evergreen leaves cannot afford to dispense with either the promoting or inhibiting arrangements after the expiration of the first year, because for several years they still have to pass through both these seasons. It is otherwise with those leaves whose activity only lasts for a single summer. These burst from the buds at the beginning of the vegetative period, and then unfold, transpire and respire for a few months, pro- ducing organic materials, and conduct them towards the places where they are required. At the commencement of the drought, however, or on the appearance of frost, they turn yellow and fade, are detached from the stems and branches which bear them, and die. In leaves of this kind, an arrangement which is very necessary during the first season may become superfluous later—it may even become disadvantageous under changed external influences, and the leaf would then be benefited by freeing itself entirely from the contrivance. It would often be useful to the plant to substitute in the place of a protective contrivance, which is only beneficial at the commencement of the vegetative period, another arrangement fitted to the new and altered conditions. In the so-called deciduous leaves, 1.e. in those which throughout the year are only active in the summer, often only for two months, it is a fact that an alternation of this kind may be regularly observed in the mechanisms which govern transpiration. It will be noticed in a young foliage-leaf which has just pierced through the ground, or in one which is still half-hidden between the cotyledons of a seedling, or surrounded by the loosening scales of a winter bud, that the development of that portion whose duty will later on be to transpire and assimilate, is very backward. The leaf-veins are already very prominent, but the green tissue is in quite a rudi- mentary condition. It is not only that the extent of the surface is very small, but that the epidermis which covers it is not yet properly developed; the outer walls of the epidermal cells are not yet fortified with a cuticle, and are consequently neither water-tight nor impermeable to aqueous vapour. If exposed to sun or wind, the green tissue would at once dry up. When the young foliage-leaf has 348 OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES. forced its way out of the bud above the soil, or from between the cotyledons, the conditions are still the same, and therefore particularly efficacious protective arrangements are required that the leaves just merging from the bud, and thus exposed to the vicissitudes of the weather, may grow up properly, 2.e. that their green transpiring tissue may be normally developed. Some of these protective contrivances belong exclusively to the developing period of the leaves, and are lost when they become fully grown. Others may be seen in the adult leaves. The most striking instances are perhaps the diminution of the surfaces directly exposed to the sun and wind, the vertical inclination of the leaf-blades, and the concealment of the green tissue under a protective mantle. The diminution of the surface directly exposed to the sun and wind is caused by the position which the foliage-leaf takes up within the bud. Space is very limited here, and the youngest and smallest leaves appear to be fitted into the space by the rolling, or folding, or crumpling of their blades. This diminution is obviously of great advantage when the leaves open out into the daylight: it constitutes a special protection against the drying up of the green tissues, and is, therefore, retained until other protective measures are developed, and in some cases even throughout life. In many Polygonacee (e.g. Polygonum viviparum and Bistorta), in species of Butter-bur (Petasites), in some Primulaces, and especially in many bulbous plants, the green portions of the leaf are rolled. The midrib, and frequently a fairly broad central strip of the leaf in addition, remains flat, and the right and left halves are rolled up from the margins, sometimes towards the upper, sometimes towards the lower surface. The stomata are chiefly, or wholly, to be found on the concave side, beneath which lies the soft green tissue with its ramifying air-passages. In the Crocus, the two halves of the leaf are rolled outwards; they are connected together by a broad, white, central stripe which is not rolled, and is devoid of chlorophyll, in the Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum), whose leaves are traversed by a similar white stripe, the leaf margins are rolled inwards. In species of Crocus the stomata are placed in the two grooves on the under surface; in the Star of Bethlehem, in the grooves on the upper surface. The central stripe of the young leaves in the plants mentioned always remains flat, but in young fern-leaves, which are also rolled, the strongly-developed midrib is curled spirally inwards like a watch-spring, and thus the green feather-like pinne, springing from the rachis, are placed one above the other. Most ferns in their native habitat rarely require special protec- tion against over-transpiration during the first stages of development; but when this is necessary, it is afforded in every case by the form assumed by the young leaf just described. Moreover, in such instances special protective envelopes are, as a rule, to be found, which will be spoken of later. Leaves are not so often crumpled as rolled on first emerging from the bud. In crumpled leaves the net-work of anastomosing veins forms a strong lattice-work, and the green leaf-substance, fitted into the interstices of the lattice, is swollen up like bubbles or sunken into pits, giving the whole leaf the appearance of a crumpled sheet of paper or cloth. The vernation (or position occupied by the leaf in the bud) is OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES. 349 therefore aptly termed “crumpled”. Leaves specially noticeable in this respect are those of the many species of dock (Rwmeza), rhubarb (Rheum), and also of several spring primulas (Primula acaulis, elatior, denticulata, &c.). Frequently the crumpling and rolling occur together, leaves with crumpled vernation having their lateral margins also somewhat rolled inwards. Young leaves which have just burst from the bud, and still retain the form they possessed there, are very often seen to be “plaited”. The veins of the leaf form, Fig. 90. Unfolding of Leaves. 1, ? Wild Cherry (Prunus avium). 8, 4 Walnut (Juglans regia). 5, 6 Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum Lantana). 7 Lady’s-mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris). 8 Wood-sorrel (Oxalis Acetosella). as it were, the fixed framework, and it is only the green portions between which are laid in folds. From the multiplicity in form and division of the leaf-veins, the kind and manner of folding is also very varied. When the leaf-blade is traversed, by radiating veins, as, for example, in the Lady’s-mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris), shown in fig. 907, the leaf is folded in vernation just like a fan; the veins which radiate out in the adult leaf are as yet parallel to one another, and the green portions which in the fully-formed leaf are stretched between the veins, form deep folds, which are closely packed together. The same arrangement occurs when each of the radiating anf) meer! 350 OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES. veins becomes the midrib of a leaflet, as in the cinquefoils, and species of clover and Wood-sorrel. Each leaflet is folded up along the midrib like a sheet of paper, and the folded leaflets are placed side by side in the same way as folded leaves in a book. When the leaves are pinnate, and the leaflets are arranged in pairs on a common rachis, the latter are folded together along their midribs, and placed side by side, so as to resemble the pages of a book. This vernation occurs in roses, Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia) and Walnut (Juglans regia), see figs. 90? and 904% In the roses the rachis is so short in the bud that the leaflets springing from it appear to originate from one point, as in the cinquefoils. In most maple-leaves and those of Saxifraga peltata, the folding takes place not along the radiating veins alone, but along the short lateral veins which spring from the larger radiating ribs. In this way small folds are inserted between the larger, and this vernation leads up to that which was described before as “crumpled”. The leaf-folding exhibited by the foliage of the Beech (Fagus silvatica, see fig. 92), the Hornbeam and the Hop- hornbeam (Carpinus and Ostrya), the Oak (Quercus), and many other plants, whilst in the bud, is very characteristic. Each foliage-leaf possesses a midrib and numer- ous strong lateral veins, which run right and left from the midrib like the bony processes from the spinal column of a fish. The green portions of the leaf form deep folds between these lateral veins, which are as yet very close to one another, and the folds are thus arranged exactly as in a fan. Yet another method of folding occurs in the Cherry (Prunus avium). Each leaf, while in the bud, and for some time after it has burst from it, is folded along the midrib only (see figs. 901 and 902). The right and left halves are so flatly folded together, and fit over one another so completely, that at first sight they appear to form only a simple leaf-blade. More- over, the two halves which are in contact are actually joined by means of a balsam- like secretion. At this stage of development they are always erect; and this brings us to another protective contrivance to be observed in young undeveloped leaves. It may be stated that, with the exception of a few “crumpled” forms, all young foliage-leaves when they emerge from the bud-scales, or from between the coty- ledons, or as they force their way through the soil into the light of day, are so directed that their blades are not horizontal. In this first stage of development, indeed, the green transpiring, but still delicate, portions of the leaf have always a vertical position. Their blades usually exhibit the direction observed in phyllo- clades and phyllodes, in the equitant leaves of irises and tofieldias, in the leaves of the compass plants during their greatest activity, and in the leaves of grasses when folded together in dry air. Sometimes the entire extended or rolled blade is erect, as in most bulbous plants and grasses; or the midrib is inclined towards the horizon, in which case the halves of the leaf are folded together and the two margins come into contact, forming a sharp edge which is turned towards the sun at noon. This is seen in some grasses (Glyceria, Poa), and in the Cherry (Prunus avium). If the blade is not erect, the stalk of the leaf is perpendicular while the OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES. 351 still delicate blade hangs from it like a closed parasol, as in Podophylluwm, Cortusa, Hydrophyllum, and several Ranunculaces. In the Horse-chestnut (disculus Hippocastanwm) the folded leaflets are erect when they emerge from the bud; they then sink down so that their apices point to the ground; and later, when the epidermis has become more thickened, they again rise until they are almost horizontal. Leaves of limes (Tilia grandifolia and parvifolia) are vertical when they first break through the bud, the apex directed towards the ground; it is only later that they become almost parallel with its surface. The upright leaf-stalk is often bent like a hook at the end, and the vertical folded leaflets depend from the hooked portion. This arrangement is shown in the common Wood-sorrel, and many other plants (see fig. 90), A third method of protecting these delicate undeveloped green portions of young leaves consists in the formation of screens and coverings, which exhibit the greatest variety. The envelope is frequently furnished by the so-ealled stipules. In many plants two lobes arise on the right and left of the leaf-stalk at the point of junction of the leaf and stem, and these have been termed “stipules” (stipule). In figs, oaks, beeches, limes, magnolias, and numerous other plants, the stipules are membraneous, pale, usually without chlorophyll, and they appear like scales placed as screens in front of the small, tender green leaflets when they burst through the bud, and in any case must be considered to protect them from the sun’s rays (see fig. 92). When once the young leaf has grown beyond the top of these screens and no longer needs them, they shrivel up, are detached, and fall to the ground. Millions of such fallen scales, called in botanical terminology “deciduous stipules”, are to be seen on the ground in oak and beech forests shortly after the leaves have attained their normal size. The stipules of magnolias, particularly of the Tulip- tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), a native of North America, but now cultivated all over Europe, are very remarkable (see fig. 91). They are comparatively large and boat-shaped, and are always so arranged in pairs as to form a closed cup. Shut up within this membraneous, slightly transparent cup can be seen the young leaf, its stalk being bent into a hook, and the two halves of the blade folded together along the midrib like those of the Cherry. In this position the leaf grows gradually as if in a small greenhouse; it enlarges, and as soon as the epidermal cells are so much thickened that there is no further danger of it drying up, the cup opens and the two boat-shaped stipules separate from one another, shrivel up, and at length fall off. Only two scars at the base of the leaf remind one that two stipules were situated here in the spring, whose function was to protect the delicate young leaf from desiccation. One of the most noticeable arrangements for the protection of the tender, undeveloped green tissue consists in the peculiar grouping of the leaf-veins. This may be best observed in foliage-leaves which are folded along the lateral veins in vernation. Each individual leaf is erect, usually a little bent at the apex and margins, and slightly hollowed so that the upper surface is concave, and the lower side, which is turned towards the incident light, convex. Since the midrib of the 352 OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES. leaf is still comparatively short, while the numerous lateral veins, on the contrary, are already strongly developed, the latter must lie so close to one another that they actually come into contact. Consequently on the under surface of the arech leaf, which is turned towards the sun, nothing can be seen of the delicate green tissue; Fig. 91.—Leaf-unfolding of the Tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera). 1 A twig at the end of which the leaves are beginning to unfold. 2 End of the same twig, the leaves being further expanded. 3 The anterior boat-shaped stipule artificially removed from the upper bud. 4 One of the stipules about to fall off. only the thick lateral veins, devoid of chlorophyll, stand out side by side like the supporting framework of a rush mat. The green portions of the leaf, which extend between the veins, form projecting folds on the concave surface, 4.¢. on the surface which is turned from the sun. They are thus hidden behind the close-pressed layer of ribs as if by a roof, and are consequently protected as efficiently as possible from OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES, 353 the sun and wind. The ribs themselves are composed of cellular structures which are not open to the danger of over-transpiration, and the epidermis which covers them is entirely devoid of stomata. When the leaves at the ends of the young twigs are opposite, erect, and concave, and their margins are in contact, they form an actual capsule round the apex of the shoot. This occurs in the Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum Lantana), illustrated in fig. 90°. The small folds of green tissue project into the interior of the capsule, and the still closely-pressed lateral veins form the outer wall, and at the same time furnish a protective covering for the enlarging green portions of the leaf. As soon as these are fully developed, and the |) tT i eS if ii h ) aff Tae ill eC Z Fig. 92.—Unfolding of Beech-leaves. 1 The brown bud-scales have been loosened, and the membraneous stipules surrounding the foliage-leaves are visible above. 2 Further stage of development, the folded foliage-leaves being visible between the stipules. % The same twig further developed. 4 Lower surface of a young folded leaf.. 5 Portion of the same leaf; the depressions caused by the folding are bridged over by silky hairs. 6 Surface view of an unfolded leaf; the stipules are withered and about to fall. 7 Vertical section of a leaf at right angles to the midrib. 8 Vertical section parallel with the midrib. é epidermal cells are correspondingly thickened, the projecting folds become smooth, the veins separate from one another, and the whole leaf becomes flat, assumes a ‘horizontal instead of a vertical position, and turns the upper instead of the lower surface to the incident light (see fig. 90°). It has already been repeatedly stated that coats of varnish as protective coverings are especially to be met with on young leaves, which they guard from over-transpiration and desiccation during their development, and that when the leaf-laminze become provided with a cuticularized epidermis, these coats disappear. Tt has also been pointed out, incidentally, that coats of hairs are of great use as protections and screens to the young foliage-leaves when they first emerge from the Vou, I. 23 354 OLD AND YOUNG LEAVES. buds. The leaves of a great number of plants are only hairy during the commence- ment of development. Long hair-cells may be seen inserted by their narrow bases between the flattened epidermal cells; these at an early stage shrink up close to their origin, and then break off. They may remain hanging to the leaf for a little while, but afterwards are thrown or pushed off by the enlargement and expansion of the leaf-blade, or are frequently blown away by the wind. The leaflets, which were originally quite thickly clothed with hairs, then appear partially or entirely smooth and green on both sides. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by Amelanchier vulgaris, whose foliage, early in the spring, is folded along the midrib and covered with snow-white wool, reminding one strongly of the Edelweiss, while in the summer no trace of the covering remains. The White Poplar (Populus alba), pear-trees, and mountain-ashes behave in like manner. Horse-chestnut leaves, when they make their way through the brown, loosened bud-scales, are thickly covered with wool, but during the spring they lose this so completely that only here and there on the fully-formed leaves can remnants still be observed clinging to the leaf. It is, however, not only woolly coverings that are later either partially or wholly thrown off as superfluous. On the foliage-leaves of the already- mentioned Wayfaring Tree (Viburnwm Lantana) appear felted stellate hairs which fall off as soon as the epidermis is sufficiently thickened. In a species of Rhubarb (Rhewm Ribes) brittle, candelabra-like, short-branched trichomes are situated on the edge of the leaf, which is much crumpled at an early stage, and later, when of no further use, they break away in pieces and fall off. Again, in many mulleins (e.g. Verbascum pulverulentum and granatense), there are branched, shrub-like hair-structures which become detached from the surface of the fully- developed leaves, and are carried away in loose flakes by the wind. The covering of the young leaves of the Beech (Fagus silvatica) consists of silky hairs, and the way in which these are arranged and utilized is so peculiar that it is worth while to inquire further into the details. At first sight, the under surface of the young beech-leaf appears to be entirely covered with silky hair; on a closer examination, however, it is seen that the hairs are only inserted on the margins and on lateral veins, and that the green portions of the leaf are in reality perfectly smooth and free from hairs. Since the green portions of the leaf are thrown into deep folds (see figs. 92 and 925), and the veins are still close to one another, while the tops of the silky hairs springing from these veins reach far beyond the vein next to them, all the furrowed depressions caused by the folding are completely covered over. Each groove is bridged over by the hairs, which are regularly arranged, side by side, parallel to one another; thus the leaf appears to be clothed completely in a delicate silken coat. There can be no doubt as to the function of these hairs. The green tissue overspanned by them is protected from the sun until its epidermis is sufficiently thickened, and when this is the case the folds flatten out (fig. 92°) and the leaf assumés a horizontal instead of a vertical position, thus turning the lower surface away from the sun, and rendering the hairs of no further use. They have become FALL OF THE LEAF. 3855 superfluous, and. usually fall off—or, if they still remain on the lateral veins, they are shriveled, insignificant, and meaningless. The dry membraneous scales seen on young fern-leaves should be mentioned here. Let us examine a frond of the first wild fern we meet—say of Nephrodiwm Filia-mas. The young frond is still spirally rolled, although it has forced its way through the soil, and is now exposed to the wind. Moreover, nothing is to be seen of the fresh green which later adorns this fern; the lower part of the midrib and lateral veins appear to be strewn with chaff, being entirely covered with dry membraneous brown scales and shreds. Later, as the leaf unrolls more and more, its green fronds also become expanded, but by this time the cell-walls are sufficiently strengthened, and no longer require the chaffy coat. In ferns which grow in sunny, rocky situations, and as epiphytes on the fissured bark of old trees in tropical regions, this coat of chaffy scales is even more noticeable, and, as stated earlier, in such plants it persists throughout life. FALL OF THE LEAF. Just as many phenomena of the sprouting and unfolding of foliage are dependent upon transpiration at the beginning of the vegetative period, so many processes, but chiefly that of the fall of the leaf, stand in causal connection with transpiration at the close of that period. Sooner or later, of course, the activity of each leaf entirely ceases; it dies, becomes detached from the stem to which it has rendered service, and falls to the ground, where it decays. In districts where the vegetation can continue its activity uninterruptedly throughout the year, there is nothing very noticeable about the fall of the leaf. Asa rule, as the new leaves arise below the growing apex of the shoot, the lower, older leaves wither up and decay; the fall is quite gradual, and takes place, like the development of new leaves, all through the year. In neighbourhoods, however, where the changes of climate prevent the uninterrupted activity of plants throughout the year, it is essentially different. Trees and shrubs, and many smaller plants, shed the whole of their foliage in a few days at certain annually-recurring periods, and then remain with bare branches for a considerable time, apparently quite lifeless. This is the case in regions where a long, hot, dry period follows the short rainy season, and also in very cold districts where the long-continued frost causes an icy winter, and the plants are locked in a deep sleep. In tropical and sub-tropical regions, where no showers occur for many months at a time, the branches become stripped of their leaves. Even at the begin- ning of the dry hot season, they remain apparently dead for months, but again break out into leaf at the commencement of the cooler rainy season, when invigor- ating moisture is supplied to the parched ground. On the other hand, in those regions of the temperate zone in which there is no sharp distinction between the rainy and dry seasons, and rain falls every month, the foliage is stripped from the trees at the beginning of the cold period, and after the winter is over, fresh green leaves once more burst from the buds on the branches. 356 FALL OF THE LEAF. It certainly appears strange that the leaf-fall should be sometimes connected with the approach of cold, and sometimes with that of hot weather. And yet this is the fact. Heat and cold are only the indirect causes; the primary cause of the fall of the leaf is the danger threatened to the plant by the continuance of transpira- tion when either heat or cold is excessive. The danger of transpiration during con- tinued dryness of soil and air scarcely requires much explanation. The conditions may be summed up in a few words: the throwing off of the transpiring surfaces when the drought commences, and the temporary stoppage of the sap-current—z.e. the so- called “summer sleep”—furnish one of the best protective measures in plants sur- rounded by air against excessive transpiration and withering. It is more difficult to explain the connection between the fall of the leaf and the commencement of the cold period. This is best indicated by some culture experiments which illustrate these relations. When the soil, in which are cultivated plants with actively trans- piring leaves (melons, tobacco, and the like), is cooled down to a few degrees above zero, the leaves after a short time become faded, even although the temperature of the air and the humidity of both soil and air are entirely favourable. By the lowering of temperature in the soil, the absorbing activity of the roots buried therein is so reduced that the water which is lost by transpiration from the foliage- leaves can no longer be replaced. The leaves wither, dry up, turn brown or black, and appear to be burnt or charred. In the ordinary language of gardeners they are said to be “frozen”—frozen at a temperature above the freezing point, which phenomenon is said to be due to the peculiar sensitiveness of these plants. It is incorrect to speak of freezing in this case, however. The plants are in reality dried up by reason of the low temperature of the soil and consequent lessening of the stream of fluid up to the transpiring foliage-leaves. In regions which annually pass through a long period of cold, the leaves of the plants are as liable to be dried up by the cooling of the soil round their roots when winter approaches, as are the trees in the catingas of Brazil when the hot dry season commences. They also denude themselves of their leafy raiment as these do, since otherwise they would be unable to make good the water exhaled by the leaves. When the temperature of the air sinks below zero, frost ensues, and the water in the plant stiffens into ice; this hastens the fall of the leaf, but it was already partially accomplished before the frost set in, and where the leaves still cling to the branches, preparations are already made for their detachment, which is brought about by the limitation of transpira- tion. It must not be concluded from this that plants foresee the approach of winter, and that the preparations for the fall of the leaves result from such an intelligent foresight; the phenomenon is much more easily explained on the assumption that in a climate which renders necessary a long cessation of transpiration, those plants flourish and multiply best whose natural characteristic is to follow a period of energetic work by a long season of rest. The ultimate cause of this instinctively adaptive periodicity is certainly not yet explained; it is as mysterious as those life processes and phenomena which regularly recur at certain periods, which are perhaps hastened or retarded by favourable or unfavourable external conditions,*but cannot FALL OF THE LEAF, 357 be stopped by them, and which the plant carries out, or endeavours to carry out, without immediate external stimulus. It is highly interesting, with respect to the acceleration or retardation of the leaf- fall, to observe how the same species of plant will behave under various favourable or retarding external influences; or how, in each region and locality, a selection has been made to a certain extent of the plants best adapted to the given conditions, First it is to be noticed that, under otherwise similar circumstances, the foliage remains green for a longer time, and is retained longer on the branches in places where the soil and air are more humid. In damp, shady, wooded glens, not only ferns, but the leaves of birches, beeches, and aspens are still green while on the sunny hillocks close at hand the brown leaves flutter down on to the withered fronds of the Bracken Fern. The most remarkable fact, however, is that in elevated mountain regions a plant loses its leaves much earlier than does.the same species growing in the lowlands. From the fact that in the Alps, the larches and whortleberry bushes, on the upper limits of the woods, put forth their green needles and leaves about a month later than in the valleys at a height of 600 metres above the sea, it would naturally be expected that this considerable delay would be compensated for by a corresponding postponement of the ending of the year’s work, and that the fall of the foliage on the upper limits of the wood would also be postponed for about a month. But this is far from being the case. The same species of larch which becomes green a month later, up on the mountain slopes, also turns yellow a month earlier in the autumn. While the whortleberry bushes in the depths of the valley are still adorned with dark-green leaves, the same species growing in the glades on the upper limit of the wood, already, from the valley, appear to be shrouded in deep crimson. Their leaves are becoming discoloured above, and are withering and dropping from the twigs. The explanation of this phenomenon follows naturally from what has just been said. In the high mountain regions where tall trees find their uppermost limit, the ground is frequently covered with frost at the end of August; snow falls regularly in the first half of September, and although this may be melted in sunny places, the soil is nevertheless thoroughly cooled by the water so produced. The days rapidly become shorter, and the sunbeams can no longer replace the heat lost by radiation in the lengthened nights. The temperature of the soil in which the plants are rooted consequently falls rapidly, and the immediate results are that the absorbent roots stop working, the decolorization progresses, and the foliage-leaves, which are no longer able to repair the loss caused by transpiration, wither and fall away. Accordingly, on this upper tree limit, only those larches and whortleberry-bushes can thrive which are organized to commence their year’s work a month later, and to finish it a month earlier, than those which have taken up their position 1400 metres below. This obviously applies not only to the larches and whortleberries, cited here as examples, but to all other plants whose range of distribution extends from the lowlands up to the wood limit on the slopes-of the mountains. It also applies 358 FALL OF THE LEAF. further to those plants which have a wide horizontal distribution; for example, to those which grow wild or are cultivated from the lowlands at the northern foot of the Alps to South Italy, and even further south, on the further side of the Mediterranean. By journeying southwards, it will be seen that the beeches and elms which, on the northern foot of the Alps near Vienna, lose their colour in the beginning of October, are never discoloured before November on the moun- tains of Madeira, and that whilst the planes already show leafless branches in the North Tyrolese valleys at Innsbruck, they retain their leaves (although these are turning yellow) on the mild shores of Lake Garda at the southern foot of the Alps. In Palermo they are still adorned with dark-green foliage. Planes, indeed, in certain instances remain green all winter in Greece, and thus far it was no myth when Pliny spoke of evergreen planes. The Elder, which in the north is a deciduous plant, in Poti, on the Black Sea, retains its green leaves through the whole winter. In the oases of the North African deserts the Peach-tree keeps its foliage fresh and green from one vegetative period to another, and while the blossom of this tree in Central and South Europe unfolds on branches which have lost their foliage in the previous autumn, in the oases the flowers are situated amongst the still green leaves of the last period of vegetation. It may be confidently assumed that here also the cause is the temperature and humidity of the ground, and that the planes and peaches, whose roots at the end of autumn and winter are buried in a damp and relatively warm soil, are the last to throw off their foliage. From all these considerations it cannot be doubted that the stripping of the foliage depends upon the stoppage of transpiration, and primarily upon the dry- ing-up of those sources from which the transpiring leaves derive their water. Plants which denude themselves of their foliage of course lose with it much organic material, for whose production they have toiled for months; but this loss will stand no comparison with the advantages gained by the abscission of the leaves. In reality, it is only a framework of empty cells—the dead envelopes of the living portion of the plant—which is thrown away. The protoplasm has opportunely withdrawn, the plastids which carried on their activity in the cells of the foliage have migrated thence and taken up winter quarters in other sheltered parts of the plant—in the stem, roots, or tubers, and have there deposited everything which will be of use in the following year, such as starch, sugar, &c. The empty cells can thus be easily sacrificed to the common weal. The leaves fall to the ground, where they decay and help to form natural mould, of which the posterity of the deciduous plants reap the benefit. Since, by the formation of albuminous com- pounds in the leaves, an abundance of calcium oxalate arises which is of no further use to the plant, and is consequently stored up in such quantity at the end of summer that it at last becomes burdensome to the plants, the throwing off of the foliage must really be regarded as a method of removing waste materials, and may be compared to the excretion of waste which occurs in animals, Finally, it should be noted that only plants whose foliage lies flat on the ground, or whose branches and twigs are very elastic and bear needle-shaped leaves, are FALL OF THE LEAF. 359 unharmed by the pressure of snow. ‘Trees, bushes, and shrubs with broad out- spread leaves, such as planes, maples, limes, beeches, and elms, are not capable of supporting the weight of snow lying on their large leaf-surfaces. When, as occasionally happens, mountain and valley are covered in snow in the autumn before the leaf-fall has commenced, or when, late in the spring, to the terror of the farmer, snow falls on wood and meadow after the young leaves have attained to a considerable size, the devastation produced is fearful. The large-leaved shrubs are pressed down and their stems broken. Branches as thick as one’s arm and huge tree-trunks are shattered, and in the woods quantities of maples and beeches are felled, or even uprooted. Such devastation would recur every year in regions with snowy winters if the leafy trees did not strip off their foliage in time, and it can easily be imagined what would happen to the woods after a series of such catastrophes. There is, consequently, a widespread idea that the autumnal leaf-fall is brought about by frost. This idea is founded on the observation that when the temperature in October and November falls below zero, quantities of leaves drop from the branches in the early hours following the cold bright nights. Though it can scarcely be denied that the fall of the leaf is in some measure connected with frost, still that it is not always the immediate cause, is demonstrated by the fact that when plants with leafy branches are exposed at the end of August or beginning of September to a temperature below zero the leaves do not fall immediately; while, on the other hand, the foliage of limes, elms, maples, cherry-trees, &., is at last stripped off in the autumn even though no frost has occurred. It can only be said, therefore, as already stated, that frost is favourable to the fall of the leaf, and that it hastens the commencement of the process; but not that the detachment of the foliage is brought about by its sole agency. The detachment of the leaves from the branches is brought about by the formation of a peculiar layer of cells, from the co-operation of a special tissue, which has been termed the layer of separation. As a rule, leaves cannot detach them- selves without the previous formation of this tissue, not even if they are exposed for a long time to a very low temperature, and the sap in their cells and vessels is stiffened into ice. That portion of the leaf in which the separation is to take place is made up of a strong tough tissue, and the mechanical alterations produced by the frost would not sufficé to complete the rupture. The separation-layer, on the other hand, which is formed within this tissue in one or several definite places, consists of succulent parenchymatous cells, whose walls are so constructed that they are easily separated by mechanical or chemical agencies, thus rendering possible a disintegra- tion of the cell-tissue. The incitement to the construction of a layer of separation is indeed usually the limitation of transpiration by the gradual cooling of the ground, and the cessation of the absorbing power of the roots in those regions which experience a cold winter. As soon as this restriction of transpiration commences—and it varies very much, as shown in the previous discussion, with the latitude and altitude of the region in question—thin-walled cells arise in the lower 360 FALL OF THE LEAF. portion of the leaves and leaflets, which rapidly increase by division, and in a short time form a zone, readily to be distinguished from the thick older tissue by its lighter tint and by the fact that it is somewhat transparent. Usually this zone is formed in the petiole, and at those places where the vascular bundles become narrowed in passing from the twig to the leaf-blade, there to divide up into the ribs and veins. The growing tissue is inserted just at this place; it actually presses and tears the other older cells apart, and even causes a rupture between them. As soon as the separation -layer has attained its proper thickness, its thin-walled cells separate from one another, but so as not to injure or burst their membranes in any way. It seems that the so-called middle lamella of the cell-wall is dissolved by organic acids, and that thus the continuity between the cells of the separation-layer is destroyed. The most trifling cause will now effect a splitting in the loose tissue and a fracture between the cells of the separation-layer; and when no other external shock follows, the detachment ul‘imately takes place of itself, the weight of the leaf helping to bring about a complete severance. As a rule, however, the fall of the leaf is hastened by external influences. Every gust of wind brings down the leaves; the alterations in volume dependent on the frost and chill and the subse- quent thawing of the cell-sap, aid the severance and also hasten the tearing of vascular bundles which are still entire; and thus it happens that thousands of leaves fall to the ground even in the absence of wind, especially when, after a frosty night, the rising sun illuminates the autumn-tinted leaves, and dissolves the frozen sap. The region where the separation is effected is usually sharply marked off, and it looks as if the leaves and leaflets had been cut through with a knife. The severed surfaces present a variety of contours, according to the shape of the leaf-stalk. Sometimes it is horseshoe-shaped, sometimes triangular or rounded, or it reminds one of a trefoil-leaf, and sometimes it has an annular shape. The stalk of the plane-tree leaf has at the base a conical swelling which incloses a bud; when the leaf falls a fissure is formed entirely going round it. Many of the separation surfaces of the leaf-stalks are like the articular surfaces of the long bones in the human skeleton (of the radius, tibia, and at the elbow). Vine leaves form two layers of separation, one close to the stem at the base of the leaf-stalk— the other at the upper end of the leaf-stalk immediately below the blade. In the palmate leaves of the Horse-chestnut and Virginian Creeper (A mpelopsis), in the compound leaves of Spirea Arwncus, in the pinnate leaves of the Chinese Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus glandulosa), and in the bipinnate leaf of the North American Gymnocladus Canadensis, a small separation layer arises below each leaflet, and a larger one, in addition, at the base of the leaf-stalk. Such leaves, consisting of several leaflets, collapse like houses built of cards when touched, and under the trees late in the autumn lies a confused heap of leaflets and leaf-stalks, the latter some- times looking like. long rods (as, for example, in the Ailanthus and Gymmocladus), sometimes almost like long bones (as in the Horse-chestnut, fig. 93). Frequently the layer of separation is so situated on the leaf-stalk that after the FALL OF THE LEAF, 361 detachment a small portion of the stalk remains on the branch. This is the case in the so-called Syringa, or Mock Orange (Philadelphus), where the scale-like part which is left has to protect the bud situated just above the leaf-stalk. In some trees and shrubs defoliation is very rapid, in others only gradual. Tn the Japanese Maidenhair Tree (Ginkgo biloba), the formation of the separation-layer and the detachment of the leaves is completed in a few days; in hornbeams and oaks the stripping of the foliage continues for weeks, and frequently only a portion os 1D [Fat i piversin! gO tr of the dead leaves is thrown off in the autumn, the remainder not until the close of the winter. It is also worthy of remark that in some trees the leaf-fall begins at the end of the branches and gradually proceeds towards the base, while in others the contrary is the case. In ashes, beeches, hazels, and hornbeams, the apices of the branches are leafless when the lower parts still bear firmly-fixed foliage; in limes, willows, poplars, and pear-trees, on the other hand, the lower portions of the branches are seen to lose their leaves early in the autumn, the denudation gradually extending upwards; on the extreme ends of the branches some leaves, as a rule, obstinately remain for a long time, until they also are at length whirled away by the first snowstorm. 362 THE VASCULAR TISSUES AND TRANSPIRATION. CONNECTION BETWEEN THE STRUCTURE OF THE VASCULAR TISSUES AND TRANSPIRATION It is naturally to be expected that between the contrivances regulating transpira- tion in the immediate neighbourhood of the green tissue, and those mechanisms which effect the transport of the crude sap from the roots, through the stem and branches, up to the region of this transpiring tissue, a mutual co-operation will exist. Where much water is exhaled from the surface, much water must be supplied, and in tracts leading to extensive and strongly-transpiring leaf-blades, the fluid moves more quickly than in a conducting apparatus leading to green tissue, which transpires but slowly and to a small extent. In pines, whose stiff acicular leaves transpire but little, the raw food-sap moves much more sluggishly than is the case with maples, whose flat leaves give off large quantities of water in the form of vapour. The quickest movement, however, is to be found in twining and climbing plants, whose stems, a few centimetres in thickness, may attain to a length exceeding 100 metres. This is the case in those peculiar climbing palms, which at first wind over the ground in numerous snake-like coils, and then rise to the tops of the highest trees, and unfold their leaves there in the sunshine. Climbing palms (Rotang) are known whose stems actually attain a length of 180 metres, and which, when they have reached the summit of the trees after numerous windings, become erect and extend their larger pinnate leaves just like the straight-stemmed palms. The illustration opposite (fig. 94) depicts in the background the edge of a wood up whose trees have climbed examples of such a species of Rotang. Many hours of the day may pass, when, on account of a clouded sky and the great humidity of the air, the transpiration in the wide-spreading leaves above the tops of the trees will be extremely little; but when the sun shines brightly and the leaves become thoroughly warmed, a large quantity of water vapour must be exhaled in a very short time. This quantity of water must be replaced, and very quickly, but by means of a stem 180 metres long and only some centimetres thick. In order to render the replacement possible, everything which might hinder the rapid movement of the water and its dissolved food-stuffs on its long journey, especially the resistance of the conducting tubes, must be minimized as much as possible. The forward movement of fluids in a channel is, however, rendered more difficult as the tube narrows, because in a narrower tube a relatively larger amount of the fluid adheres to the inner surface, and therefore it is necessary, in order to obtain a rapid movement, that this adhesion be reduced as far as possible. This is most simply effected by widening the channel, since the adherent surface is thus diminished in comparison with the large amount of the fluid passing through. As a matter of fact, in the stems of climbing palms relatively very wide tubes are to be seen, through which a large quantity of fluid can be brought from the roots to the transpiring leaf-surfaces in a very short time, and this actually occurs. The climbing palm, Calamus angustifolius, has conducting tubes THE VASCULAR TISSUES AND TRANSPIRATION. 363 of more than 4 mm. diameter, and in the species of Rotang illustrated in fig. 94 they are almost as wide. Fig. 94.—Indian Climbing Palms (Rotang). From a photograph. What has been stated here with especial regard to the Rotang or Climbing Palm applies also to all other twining and climbing plants known by the name of lianes, and their sap-conducting tubes are the wider, the longer their stems and the larger 364 THE VASCULAR TISSUES AND TRANSPIRATION. their transpiring leaves. In very many lianes the cavities of the conducting vessels can be plainly seen with the naked eye. This is the case, for example, in the cross- section of the liane represented in natural size in fig. 95° A diameter of } mm. is Fig. 95.—Lianes. 1 Portion of tne suem of a tropical Aristolochi 2 Cross section of a liane-like Aristolochia. 8 Menispermum Carolinianum. 4 Cross section of the twining stem of Menispermum (magnified). 6 Portion of a liane (probably an Asclepiad) gathered in a tropical forest; nat. size. not at all rare in passion-flowers and aristolochias, and, generally speaking, in most twining and climbing plants; whilst in many lianes the conducting tubes have even been observed to be 0°7 mm. in diameter. THE VASCULAR TISSUES AND TRANSPIRATION, 365 mT BN Cite —> = = Fig. 96.—Aroids (Philodendron pertusum and Philodendron Imbe) with cord-like aérial roots. | gs *, 366 THE VASCULAR TISSUES AND TRANSPIRATION. A particularly noticeable method of conducting water from the soil to the green leaf-blades is exhibited by some large-leaved tropical Aroids which climb up trees, and are provided with aérial roots. These plants have really two kinds of aérial roots, viz.: shorter ones, which are at right angles to the stem, by means of which they climb up their support, usually old tree-trunks; and longer ones, passing down perpendicularly to the ground like ropes or strings. In the Mexican Tornelia fragrans (Philodendron pertuswm) represented in fig. 96, these latter roots attain a length of 4-6 metres and a diameter of 1-2 cm. They are of uniform thickness, brown, smooth, unbranched, and quite straight. As soon as they reach the ground, the tip bends round almost at a right angle, and sends a number of lateral roots which are covered with an actual fur of root-hairs into the soil. The bent end then enters the soil for a short distance, and thus the entire aérial root is rendered fairly tense. As a rule, two such cord-like aérial roots originate below each new leaf, and it seems as if this arrangement was specially adapted to transport the necessary food-sap from the soil to the large luxuriant leaf above by the shortest path. But it not only seems so, for this is actually the case, and it is especially remarkable that root-pressure takes a prominent part in the transport. On cutting through one of these cord-like aérial roots about a span above the ground, watery fluid is immediately seen to ooze from the middle of the cut surface. The woody portion of the root, which here forms a central strand, contains very wide conducting tubes, like those in the stems of lianes, and the quantity of fluid exuded in thirty-six hours amounts to as much as 17 grms. It is noteworthy that the root-pressure here, according to all appearances, acts with the same force all through the year. In the vine this is not the case. Vines which are cut through in the summer, it is well known, no longer weep; the cord-like aérial roots of tropical aroids, on the other hand, weep at all seasons of the year when cut across. Indeed, the vegetative activity is never entirely interrupted in these plants all the year, and it should be remembered, in connection with this fact, that they grow in places where the air and soil are always warm, and where their humidity is only subject to slight variations. It may happen that in damp, warm places transpiration from the leaves ceases for a time entirely, and then it is very necessary that the amount of food-sap should be forced up to the leaves by root- pressure in order that they may be supplied with the food-salts they require. The water, which contained dissolved food-salts, is of no use when it has given these up, and it is therefore forced out of the stomata, these in consequence being trans- formed into water pores. The aérial roots, which form the shortest and straightest channels for con- ducting the raw food-sap to the leaves, are, moreover, of great importance to these tropical aroids, since it not infrequently happens that the lower portion of the stem’ in an old plant dies off, leaving the upper part, which is fastened to the trunk of a tree by the earlier-mentioned short supporting roots, and therefore in no direct connection with the ground. The supporting roots would not be sufficient to supply the fluid food required, and the whole plant is therefore provided TRANSMISSION OF THE FOOD-GASES. 367 with this food only through these cord-like aérial roots which are sent down into the soil. These few examples are enough to show that the construction of the stem and roots stands most intimately related to transpiration, inasmuch as the transpiring green tissue is effected by the structure. But since the construction of these plant members, 7.¢. the architecture of the stem, is also dependent upon various other vital processes to be described later, it would not be fitting to discuss their relations here in detail, and their treatment must be postponed until a later section. 5. CONDUCTION OF FOOD-GASES TO THE PLACES OF CONSUMPTION. Transmission of the food-gases in land and water plants and in lithophytes.—Significance of aqueous tissue in the conduction of food-gases. It has been repeatedly pointed out that a division of labour occurs in all large plants, so that one portion of the cells provides for the reception of water and food- salts, another for that of food-gases, and yet another for the conduction and trans- mission of fluid and gaseous nourishment to the places where they are consumed. How the aqueous food-salt solutions derived from the soil are brought to the green tissue, what contrivances are thereby brought into action, and what phenomena of plant-life are related to this conduction have been discussed, as far as practicable, in the previous pages, and it now only remains to describe the transmission of the gaseous food-materials. This is far more simple than the conduction of the solutions of food-salts. The most important of the food-gases in question are carbonic acid and nitric acid. Carbonic acid is continually being conducted by means of water to the green tissues. The shortest passage is to be found in aquatic plants whose protoplasm, provided with green chlorophyll and in need of carbonic acid, is only separated from the surrounding water by a thin - cell-wall, while this water always contains carbonic acid, though perhaps only in small quantity. Under the influence of sunlight, the groups of green cells in hydrophytes form a centre of attraction to the carbonic acid, which is sucked up with great energy from the surrounding water, passes easily through the cell-wall, and so comes directly into the neighbourhood of the green protoplasm, 1e. that place where its decomposition is effected. The green cells of water plants therefore furnish an apparatus for both absorbing and decomposing carbonic acid, and usually no further means and no special conduction through other cells are required. In lithophytes it is otherwise. Here we have the remarkable fact that they are only active at times; only, that is to say, when they are sufficiently moistened by rain, dew, and mist, and are to some extent submerged for a time by heavy down- pours. In dry air their vital activity is suspended; they then adhere to the rocks like 368 TRANSMISSION OF THE FOOD-GASES. withered turf and dry scales, as if dead. But as soon as they are moistened, or can condense moisture from the air, they are aroused to renewed vitality, and then suck up with great eagerness atmospheric water, which always contains small quantities of carbonic acid gas, and also traces of nitric acid. In the rock-inhabiting mosses the cells, which absorb water from the atmosphere containing carbonic acid, are also those in which the decomposition of carbonic acid takes place. In this respect these mosses behave exactly like aquatic plants; nor is it perhaps superfluous here again to point out the interesting fact already mentioned, that there are mosses which permanently live under water, and there behave like true water plants, though they are able equally to live on rocks, where they remain dried up for weeks together, and only resume their activity when wetted by rain. It is to be taken for granted that such damp, water-saturated mosses have the capacity of absorbing carbon dioxide from the surrounding atmosphere. The carbon dioxide is changed into carbonic acid by its passage through the cell-wall saturated with water. Probably it is only when carbonic acid is dissolved in water that it reaches the active protoplasm in the cells in question. In lichens the carbonic acid which reaches the protoplasm provided with chlorophyll is also dissolved in water; however, in most lichens the green cells do not come in contact with the atmosphere, but are separated from it by a layer of hyphal threads. Thus the conduction to the green cells takes place by means of the hyphal layer destitute of chlorophyll. In land plants also the cells which are filled with chlorophyll-bearing protoplasm seldom come directly into contact with the atmosphere; usually the green tissue is surrounded with an actual mantle of water. That is to say, the cavity of each epidermal cell contains very watery fluid, or, in other words, in the fully-formed epidermal cells the protoplasm constitutes merely the parietal layers without chlorophyll, their large cavities being filled with water. These epidermal cells fit closely to each other, and on the upper side of the leaf are only rarely interrupted by stomata. Usually the epidermis on the upper side of the leaf gives rise to a layer of cells with clear watery contents, directly bordering on the green palisade tissue; and as the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere has to pass from the upper side to this green tissue, it must first of all pass through this watery cell-layer of the epidermis. There it becomes changed into carbonic acid, and passes from this epidermal sphere of activity, not in the form of gas, but dissolved in water, to the cells of the palisade tissue below. Since the green palisade tissue under the influence of sunlight uses up the carbonic acid in the manufacture of organic material, it becomes a centre of attraction for this acid as long as the illumination continues. At first the carbonic-acid-bearing contents of the contiguous cells are eagerly absorbed, and indirectly carbon dioxide also is drawn from the surrounding air and made to force its way into the epidermal cells. The cell-wall offers no great resistance to this entrance. It has been proved that carbonic acid, or rather carbon dioxide, passes very easily through the cell-wall. According to all this, it is evident that the small quantity of carbon dioxide is drawn from the air by the green illumimated tissue of the leaves and stem, that carbon dioxide streams TRANSMISSION OF THE FOOD-GASES, 369 rapidly towards these parts, penetrates into the epidermal cells, is changed into carbonic acid, and reaches the green tissue by means of the aqueous contents of the epidermal cells. According to the previous statement, which has been discussed in detail, the epidermis has also to provide for the transmission of the carbonic acid to the places of consumption, viz. to the green tissue. In accordance with climatic and other local conditions, and corresponding to the individuality of separate species, the epidermis presents, as is well known, endless variations in structure. This variety of formation is concerned chiefly with the part which it has to play as a protective covering, as strengthener, and the like. As a conducting apparatus for carbonic acid, that is, in the form of a water mantle or outer aqueous tissue, it exhibits comparatively little variation. In evergreen plants which grow in warm, damp situations where transpiration is limited, and where the water of the soil is often conducted by root-pressure to the large transpiring leaf-surfaces, as, for examples, in tropical bananas, palms, mangroves, figs, and peppers, the aqueous cells which lie above the green palisade tissue are always arranged in several layers. In all those plants also whose outermost cells in contact with the air have much thickened walls, and consequently a restricted lumen, as, for example, in the Oleander, which grows on the sides of brooks (see fig. 73°),and in the proteaceous Dryandra floribunda growing in the Australian, bush (see fig. 68), the water mantle consists of a double layer of cells. When the green tissue is penetrated by vascular bundles and groups of strengthening cells without chlorophyll, the aqueous epidermal layer is also interrupted, and is usually only co-extensive with the palisade cells. In the leaves of grasses the colourless aqueous cells form rows which are placed above the green assimilating tissue, and surround this tissue as an actual mantle. The demand of the green tissue for carbonic acid regulates itself to the consumption in the formation of organic substances. But the consumption is at a maximum at the time of strongest illumination and greatest warming of the green tissue, and therefore coincides with the most abundant transpiration. At such a time the carbonic-acid-bearing sap is drawn by the active protoplasm in the green tissue with great eagerness from the epidermal cells lying above, often so abundantly that a quick replacement is impossible. But in consequence of this the epidermal cells lose their turgescence; they collapse, and the hitherto tense epidermis presents a flaccid appearance. In order that this collapse may take place without injury, the following contrivance has been devised. The side-walls of those cells which form the epidermis, i.¢. the outer aqueous tissue, are delicate, thin, and flexible, and as these cells give up a portion of their sap, their side-walls are folded together just like a bellows from which the air has been expelled. When the cells become again filled with fluid, the folds are straightened out as in a bellows filled with air, and the cells regain their former tenseness. In the course of the foregoing representation we have only described the transmission of carbonic acid through the epidermal cells rich in watery Cleap on Vou. I. 370 TRANSMISSION OF THE FOOD-GASES. the upper side of the leaf. But it must not be forgotten that the same process also takes place on the under side of the leaf, particularly when the green tissue is not divided into palisade cells and spongy parenchyma, and also when the epidermis is provided with stomata both on the upper and under sides of the leaf. In certainly 70 per cent of all leafy plants the arrangement is such that palisade tissue occurs beneath the succulent epidermis of the upper side, under this again spongy parenchyma, and again under this the epidermis of the lower side, which is abundantly pierced by stomata. It can therefore be asserted, for the majority of plants with green foliage, that the epidermis of the upper side chiefly regulates the transmission of carbonic acid to the palisade cells, and that transpiration is chiefly regulated by the epidermis of the lower side. It is hardly probable that carbonic acid finds entrance to the green tissue through the stomata. At the time when the demand for carbonic acid is at a maximum in the green tissue, a considerable quantity of food-salts must be delivered to the green cells, and the water which provides for the transport of the food-salts from the soil up to the small chemical laboratories, as the palisade cells may be called, is rapidly expelled from the stomata in the form of vapour. But while water-vapour is streaming out of the stomata, the carbon dioxide of the air can hardly stream in through the same avenues at the same time, and it may be concluded that when, generally speaking, this gas is absorbed through the stomata, the occurrence is exceptional. Concerning the filling of the epidermal cells with water and carbonic acid, it should be here again pointed out that in not a few plants the absorption of rain and dew takes place directly through the foliage-leaves. Since rain and dew always contain small quantities of carbonic acid and traces of nitric acid, this method of filling the epidermal cells is so much the less to be undervalued. In very many green foliage-leaves the continuous epidermis above the palisade cells is capable of being moistened, while the lower epidermis, rich in stomata, on the other hand, is kept dry by the most varied contrivances; and it is very probable that in such cases the water of rain and dew is taken up by the whole epidermis of the upper leaf- surface, especially when these epidermal cells have a short time previously given up a portion of their contents to the green tissue, and have become consequently somewhat collapsed. In many cases it must be concluded, from their shape and position, that the filling of the epidermal cells is only caused by the watery sap brought from the roots, and indeed only by means of the green palisade tissue, ae. of the same tissue which, on occasion, again receives watery fluid from the epidermal cells. This periodic alternation of absorption and expulsion may be explained in the following manner. The water arriving from the soil is given off by the palisade tissue to the epidermal cells at certain times, i.e. when no carbonic acid is required, in order that carbon dioxide may there be drawn from the air and changed into carbonic acid. When this has happened, and a demand for carbonic acid is set up in the palisade tissue, this tissue takes back the water it had previously given off, now of course accompanied by the absorbed carbonic acid. FORMATION OF ORGANIC MATTER FROM THE ABSORBED INORGANIC FOOD. 1. CHLOROPHYLL AND CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES. Chlorophyll-granules and the sun’s rays.—Chlorophyll-granules and the green tissue under the influence of various degrees of illumination. CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. In the former section of this book it has been described how everything which serves as food for plants is conducted to the green tissues. Food-salts, food-gases, and water arrive at the same goal by the most diverse contrivances—to the green cells as those places where the raw material is worked up and organic substances prepared from it; to the place of need where the materials for further building and development, for rejuvenescence, multiplication, and reproduction of the plants in question have to be provided. The question how living plants manufacture organic substances in the green cells from the raw materials which stream to them, particu- larly from the raw food-sap and carbonic acid, must now be discussed. First, it should be remembered that the formation of organic materials always commences with the decomposition of the absorbed carbonic acid. This decom- position, however, is only carried on by that protoplasm in which are imbedded chlorophyll-granules. The protoplasm in question can only accomplish the indi- cated task by the help of these structures, and the chlorophyll-granules are therefore really the organs on which everything depends. It is in them that those remarkable processes are carried on, upon which depends the renewal, and ultimately the existence, of all life. The description of these organs must, there- fore, precede all further discussion. Having regard to the importance of their function, the structure of the chlorophyll-granules appears to be simple enough. It is possible that later researches, with instruments and methods of observation more perfect than those now at our disposal, will furnish more accurate details about their minute structure, and particularly as to their dissimilarity from the protoplasm in which they are imbedded. In the meantime, only this much is known—that the ground-work of the chlorophyll-granules differs but little in its structure and composition from the surrounding protoplasm. Like all sharply-defined protoplasmic bodies, chlorophyll- granules exhibit a pellicle-like thickened outer layer; the inner portion, on the 372 CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. other hand, is formed of a porous mass of reticular or scatfold-like strands, which may best be compared to a bath sponge. The holes and meshes of this spongy colourless ground substance contains a green colouring matter, which is dissolved in an oily material, and clothes the continuous small spaces in the form of a parietal layer. This green colouring matter of the chlorophyll-granules, which has been called chlorophyll, is easily soluble in alcohol, ether, and chloroform. If green leaves are steeped in an alcoholic solution, they become blanched in a short time, and the colouring matter passes entirely into the fluid. The alcohol assumes the beautiful green colour which the leaves formerly possessed, and the previously green leaves are now to be seen floating in the green alcohol. In transmitted light the solution appears a beautiful green; but when observed in reflected light it appears blood-red, and therefore the colouring matter displays a marked fluorescence. If a fatty oil is added to the green-tinted alcohol, and the two are shaken up together, the green colour passes into the added medium, while in the alcohol a yellow substance remains, which has been termed xanthophyll. The chemical composition of chlorophyll is not yet so clearly understood as we could wish. It is asserted that it is possible to obtain chlorophyll in a crystallized form. The crystals obtained form green transparent rhomboids, which, when exposed to the light, slowly decompose again. This chlorophyll behaves like a weak acid; contrary to earlier belief, it is free from iron, but leaves behind almost 2 per cent of ash, consisting of alkalies, magnesia, some calcium, phosphoric and sulphuric acids. The fact that the production of these crystals must be preceded by a series of long- continued operations, together with the fact that chlorophyll is extremely delicate and easily decomposed, always allows us to suppose that the crystals mentioned are only a product of decomposition, and do not belong to that chlorophyll which colours the chlorophyll-granules in living cells. It was previously thought that chlorophyll was a mixture of two colouring matters, viz. a blue and a yellow, until later researches demonstrated that this supposition was unfounded, and that a false impression had been received through observation of the process of decomposition. A characteristic absorption spectrum has been obtained for chlorophyll, which is especially useful in all cases where it is a question of demonstrating the presence of very small quantities of the colouring matter in any parts of the plant. With respect to this it is enough to say that the whole of the violet and blue and the ultra-violet rays are cut off from the spectrum, and that it exhibits seven character- istically distributed absorption-bands. It may be further remarked here that after treating the chlorophyll with hydrochloric acid tiny crystals arise, which have been called hypochlorin. The results of all these researches have thrown but little light upon the part which chlorophyll plays in those processes which commence with the decomposition of the absorbed carbonic acid in the chlorophyll-granules. Compared with the size of the whole mass, chlorophyll forms only an extremely small fraction of the granules it colours green, and when it is withdrawn by the addition of alcohol, only the colour and not the size of the granules in question is found to be altered. CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. 373 Chlorophyll-granules appear to be imbedded in protoplasm from their origin until their disappearance. When the protoplasm is situated round the wall—or, in other words, when the central cavity of the protoplasm is large and filled with watery cell-sap, and the plasma which surrounds the sap-cavity is sac-like and only forms a thin covering to the cell chamber, then the chlorophyll-granules are usually imbedded in the middle layer of the parietal plasma, so that they are separated from the sap-filled central cavity, as also from the cell-wall, by a layer of colour- less protoplasm. The same thing occurs when the chlorophyll-granules are imbedded in the plasma strands which are stretched across the cell-cavity (see figs. 5? and 5°). Frequently the chlorophyll-granules project like warts, and thus give a knotty appearance to the protoplasmic strands; but even then they are always covered by a thin colourless layer of protoplasm. In spite of this close connection, chlorophyll-granules always appear to be sharply defined, and exhibit in their entire development a certain separateness from the protoplasm in which they may reasonably be supposed to take their origin. They enlarge, divide, and multiply, and occasionally in the course of their life alter their form. With respect to their shape there is little variety in the green tissue of the stem and leaves of higher plants. The chlorophyll-granules almost always appear there as rounded or occasionally angular, sometimes even as lenticular or many-sided grains. A much greater diversity is observed in those simple green plants which live in water, and have been classed together under the name of Alge. In the cells of the green filaments of Zygnema, which are represented in fig. m of Plate I, the chlorophyll bodies are stellate, and are so arranged in each cell that there are usually two stars side by side. In species of the genus Spirogyra (Plate I, fig. 1) they form spirally wound, usually knotty, bands, and in most species of the genus only one band in each cell; but in some species there are two bands, whose spirals cross one another, whereby very ornamental structures come into view under the microscope. In species of the unicellular Peniwm (Plate L., fig. &), the chlorophyll bodies form plates: or bands parallel to the long axis of the cell, projecting against the cell-wall in all directions. In Mesocarpus a single green plate is observable, which divides the cavity of the cell into two almost similar halves; @dogonium exhibits a latticed plate; species of the genus Ulva have plate-shaped chlorophyll bodies which lie close to the wall; in the cells of Podosira are seen disc-shaped chlorophyll bodies which jut out in all directions; and in the liverwort Anthoceros the chlorophyll bodies are in the form of hollow spheres surrounding the centres of the cells. The number of chlorophyll-granules in the protoplasm of the cell varies from one to several hundreds. In the cells of selaginellas there are usually 2-4; in those of the luminous moss, Schistostega osmundacea, to be described later more in detail, 4-12 (Plate L., fig. p). The green cells of most leafy flowering plants contain 20-100, many even 200. In the cells of Vaucheria (Plate I, fig. a-d), the proto- plasm is so crowded with thickly-pressed small green granules as to make one think that the whole cell-body contained but a single chlorophyll mass. Foliage- 374 CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. leaves, in which a distinct separation between the palisade and spongy parenchyma is completed, always show many more chlorophyll-granules in the former than in the latter. Careful countings have shown that the palisade cells usually contain three or four times—occasionally even six times—as many chlorophyll-granules as the adjoining cells of the spongy parenchyma. When the chlorophyll-granules in a cell are so many that the whole inner wall of the cell can be covered with them, they arrange and distribute themselves very equally in this manner, and such cells appear uniformly green. It then seems as if the whole cell-chamber were entirely filled with chlorophyll-granules, but this is not really the case. The central cavity of the protoplasm filled with cell-sap never contains a single chlorophyll body. _ The chlorophyll-granules imbedded in the parietal protoplasm can also undergo the most remarkable displacements, which we will forthwith describe. With regard to shape, cells with active protoplasm, containing chlorophyll- granules, exhibit the widest variety. Especially are all imaginable cell shapes to be found in the group of Desmids which live in water: rod-shaped, cylindrical (Plate I., fig. &), crescent-shaped (Plate I, fig. 1), tabular, stellate, tetrahedral, and many others for which it would be hard to find short and suitable names. The Algee, which to the naked eye seem composed of green threads, are built up of cells which are, for the most part, tubular and cylindrical (Plate I, figs. a, b, and l, m). In Lichens and Nostocacez the cells which form the tissues are spherical; in Mosses and Liverworts they are pentagonal and hexagonal. As already mentioned in former sections, the green tissue in the foliage of Phanerogams is formed, in the majority of instances, of two kinds of cells—of branched cells forming the spongy parenchyma, and of cylindrical cells which con- stitute the palisade tissue (Plate I, fig. r). The latter are often short, their length being not much greater than their width, but usually they are five or six times, and oceasionally even ten or twelve times, longer than broad. In bulbous plants the palisade-shaped cells are arranged parallel to the upper leaf-surface, but in the majority of seed-bearing plants they are at right angles to the upper surface of the foliage-leaf, as shown in the cross-section of a leaf of the Passion-flower in Plate L., fig. r. The green cells below the epidermis of pines and various firs exhibit a very peculiar form. In contour they appear angular and tabular, and are fitted closely to one another without intercellular spaces. From the cell-walls parallel to the upper surface of the leaf trabecule project into the interior, by means of which each cell is divided up into niches usually of equal size. Such cells remind one of stables in which the stalls of the different horses are separated by boarded parti- tions. The projecting trabecule are always so arranged that the entire cell-chamber appears like a group of palisade cells whose side walls separating one from another have been interrupted. These partitions, which, as stated, are to be found in many firs, but also in grasses and many Ranunculacee—especially in the Monkshood (Aconitum), Peony (Pwonia), and Marsh Marigold (Caltha)—increase the internal surface of the chamber, and this appears to be advantageous, inasmuch as by this means many more parietal chlorophyll-granules can find a place than would CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. 375 be possible in a single cell of equal dimensions, but devoid of such projecting trabeculae. It is shown by very accurate investigations that the quantity of organic substances formed in a cell, by the decomposition of carbonic acid, is greater the greater the number of chlorophyll-granules, provided that all of them are so arranged within its protoplasm that they can discharge their functions. A heap of chlorophyll-granules filling the cell irregularly would be little suited to effect this result. The small, green chlorophyll-granules must, on the contrary, be so arranged that no one deprives another of light, and this is most easily possible, especially in a many-storied plant-structure, composed of numerous cells, when the chlorophyll- granules are grouped together like the stones in a mosaic, and are arranged along the walls in this order. When, moreover, the light falls unhindered through certain portions of wall, as through a window into the cell-cavity, all the chlorophyll- granules there situated are almost equally illuminated. The larger the extent of wall surface, the more chlorophyll-granules can be accommodated on it, and there- fore the more abundantly can the decomposition of carbonic acid be carried on in such cells. For such green multicellular tissue, whose most important function is the decomposition of carbonic acid and the formation of organic substances, the parietal grouping of the chlorophyll-granules, the above-mentioned infolding of the inner surface of the cells, generally the increase of the inner surface of the cell- walls clothed with chlorophyll, is accordingly the most advantageous arrangement for the best possible utilization of the available space. : When one speaks of the “green” of plants one thinks first of all of the foliage- leaves, in ‘which that colour is especially noticeable. The name “chlorophyll” translated by “leaf-green” might lead to the idea that cells and tissues provided with chlorophyll are only to be found in the leaves; but this would not at all correspond to the true state of the case. Those plants which are not differentiated into stem and leaves, especially the many kinds of green water-plants classed under ‘the name of Algz, generally consist entirely of chlorophyll-bearing cells. In those mutually-nourishing combinations named Lichens, one of the partners is without, while the other is provided with, chlorophyll. When stem and foliage-leaves are clearly differentiated, a portion of the tissue is deprived of chlorophyll while the other portion is more or less rich in the same. Chlorophyll-containing tissue is found in all the members of these stem-plants, in roots, in stems, in foliage, in floral leaves, in fruits, and seeds. In tropical orchids the aérial roots when dry appear white and are seemingly quite devoid of chlorophyll; but when moistened their green colour is seen, because when the outer porous covering is filled with water, and its cells become transparent, the colour of the green tissue-layer below shines through. There are even orchids, eg. Angre- cum globulosum, funale, and Sallet, which, when not flowering, have no other green tissue than that in the aérial roots, and in which not only the absorption of food- materials, but also the working up of the absorbed nourishment, particularly the decomposition of carbonic acid and the formation of organic substances, is carried 376 CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. on by the green tissue of the aérial roots. Green tissue is much more frequently to be met with in stem-structures than in roots. Hundreds of rushes, bulrushes, cyperuses, and horse-tails, as well the Casuarineze and species of Ephedra, included under the switch plants, many papilionaceous plants of the genera Retama, Genista, and Spartiwm, a number of Salicornias, tropical orchids, and cactiform plants, the Duckweed (Lemna), and all the plants possessing flattened shoots (see fig. 82), contain green tissue, without exception, in the cortex of their stem and branches. Also ovaries and fruits which are not yet fully ripe are so universally coloured green that in popular language green fruit and unripe fruit are synony- mous. Chlorophyll is more rarely observed in seeds. Those whose embryos are differentiated into axis and leaf only seldom—as, for example, in the pines—show green tissue in the cotyledons. The seeds of orchids, especially those living epiphytically on the bark of trees, behave in a peculiar manner. These are marvellously small, consist of only a single group of parenchymatous cells, and no trace is to be seen in them of a radicle or cotyledon. They only retain the capacity of germinating a short time, and it is important to these seeds, which are poorly supplied with reserve food, that immediately after leaving the fruit-capsule they may be able to provide themselves with nourishment from their surroundings, and to manufacture organic substances from this food. This they can naturally only do by the help of chlorophyll, and it is interesting to notice that they also are actually endowed with this substance. Even when they are still inclosed in the capsule of the parent plant these seeds become green, and when they are carried by the wind into some cleft on the bark of an old tree-trunk the chlorophyll is able at once to function. After a short time a small green tubercle grows out of the green seed, and fixes itself by absorbent cells to the substratum, then very gradually it grows up to form a large plant-stem. Large flowers whose petals, from the commencement to the end of the flowering period, exhibit a green colour are esteemed rarities. On the other hand, small floral leaves, rich in chlorophyll, are of very common occurrence. The change of the floral colour also, during the flowering period, from white, red, violet, and brown, to green, has been frequently observed in small as well as in fairly large flowers. A very striking example of this is the Black Hellebore (Helleborus niger). When its flowers open, the outer large leaves situated below the petals (which are transformed into small nectaries), are snow-white, and show up conspicuously from their darker surroundings. From afar they attract the attention of honey-collecting insects, by whom they are eagerly sought out. When, by means of these honey-sucking insects, pollination is brought about, the small nectaries, as well as the large dazzling-white outer floral leaves called sepals, become superfluous. The nectaries forthwith fall off, but the large sepals remain and take up another function. Chlorophyll is abundantly developed in their cells; the white colour disappears; fresh green appears in its stead, and the same floral leaves which previously had attracted insects by their conspicuous colour now function as green leaves exactly like foliage-leaves. A similar alteration of colour, which also has the same CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. 377 significance, is observed in many orchids and liliaceous plants, but on the whole such a change of function in floral leaves is not common. These cursory observations must show that chlorophyll may appear in all the members of a plant, although it is also true that foliage-leaves chiefly contain the green tissue, so that certainly in 90 per cent of all chlorophyll-bearing plants the decomposition of carbonic acid is carried on in the foliage-leaves. If, now, after the description of the arrangement, form, and distribution of chlorophyll-granules, we would also learn something as to how organic substances are formed in the cell-chambers by means of these structures, we find ourselves in the position of an inquirer who visits a chemical laboratory without a guide, and wishes to ascertain in what way some material—for example, a pigment—is manufactured. He notices apparatus set up there, sees the raw materials heaped together, and also finds the finished product. If the manufacture is actually proceeding, he can also observe whether warmth or cold and greater or less pressure are brought into action as propelling forces, and he can, if intrusted with the manipulation necessary to the production of such pigment, imagine the relation of the different parts to the whole. Of the details, indeed, much must remain incomprehensible, or quite unknown. Especially with reference to the quantity of the transformed raw material, and with regard to the propelling forces, must the visitor’s knowledge remain incomplete. It is not otherwise with us when we would inspect the processes carried on in the cells where chlorophyll-granules develop their activity. We see the effective apparatus, we recognize the food-gases and food-salts collected for working up, we know that the sun’s rays act as the motive force, and we also identify the products which appear completed in the chlorophyll-granules. By careful comparison of various cells containing chlorophyll, on the ground of observations which establish the conditions under which the manufacture of organic substances succeeds best and worst, having found by experience that under certain external conditions the whole apparatus becomes disintegrated and destroyed; it is indeed permissible to hazard a conclusion about the character of the propelling forces. But what is altogether puzzling is how the active forces work, how the sun’s rays are able to bring it about that the atoms of the raw material abandon their previous grouping, become displaced, intermix one with another, and shortly appear in stable combinations under a wholly different arrangement. It is the more difficult to gain a clear idea of these processes, because it is not a question of that displacement of the atoms called decomposition, but of that process which is known as combination or synthesis. Decompositions and analyses, even of the most complicated compounds into simple combinations are well understood, but not so the converse. It is always considered a fortunate occurrence when a chemist succeeds in producing from its fundamental elements, or from the simplest com- bination of these, one of those complicated bodies, which are, nevertheless, formed with such ease in plant cells. When sugar is “made” in a manufactory, it is not that carbon and the elements of water are used, although these. are so abundantly 378 CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE SUN’S RAYS. at disposal, but only that the sugar is isolated which has been formed synthetically from these substances in those tiny chemical laboratories, the vegetable cells. Consequently it is really incorrect to say that sugar is “made” in our manu- factories; we should only say that there the sugar manufactured by the plants is separated from other substances and prepared for further use. Although it is not possible to represent the processes concerned in the synthesis of organic materials in plant cells as a matter beyond all doubt, one is justified in taking refuge in hypotheses. And it must be looked upon as an hypothesis when we consider the movement by which the atoms of the food-gases and food-salts are displaced by the sun’s rays in the vegetable cells as a transmission of the vital force of the sun. The atoms have arranged themselves by this movement in a different order, they hold and support one another, they are stable, and a condition of mutual tension has been set up. The vital force of the sun has become the hidden spring of all these changes. The now stable organic material formed by synthesis is thus equipped with an adequate supply of energy, designated in other words as latent heat. If the atoms of the organic material from whatever cause again break loose, abandoning their combination and arrangement, they perhaps so displace and rearrange themselves that those groups which previously existed are formed again, and thus the potential energy is changed to vital force, the latent heat to sensible warmth. When a tree-trunk is consumed, the vital force of the sun, which had been changed by the formation of cellulose and the other organic materials composing the wood of that time into latent force, is again transformed into active energy; and when we burn coals, the sun’s rays, which thousands of years ago brought about the formation of organic vegetable substances and were imprisoned in the coal, will again be set free, will warm our rooms, drive our machines, or propel our steamships and locomotives. Keeping this idea in view, it is at least possible to imagine the mechanical significance of the sun’s rays in the formation of organic substances in plants, and it may be reckoned that the quantity of organic substance produced stands in a fixed proportion (which may be expressed in figures) to the store of energy in the same. One circumstance on which particular stress must here be laid is that the various rays of which sunlight is composed, the rays with various wave-lengths and refrangibility, which, some of them at least, appear to our eyes as the different coloured bands in rainbows, play each a very distinct part in the formation of organic materials in plant cells. Under the influence of the blue and violet rays, ae. of those which are most highly refrangible and have the smallest wave-lengths, the oxidation of the organic materials called carbohydrates is assisted, that is to say, not the formation but the decomposition and transformation of these compounds are favoured. The red, orange, and yellow, ic. those rays which are less refrangible and have a greater wave-length, behave quite otherwise. These favour the reduction of carbonic acid, assist the formation of carbohydrates from raw materials, and are therefore chiefly concerned in the originating of such organic substances. When a sunbeam passes through a colourless glass prism a CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 379 continuous spectrum is produced—violet, dark blue, light blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. If the same sunbeam passes through a transparent but coloured body, which may be either solid or fluid, whole groups of colour absent themselves from the spectrum. Dark bands appear in the corresponding places, and we say that the light in question has been absorbed by the coloured body. Now, if chlorophyll has the property of absorbing those colours of the spectrum which are not advantageous in the formation of organic substances from raw material, the role of this chlorophyll cannot be too highly estimated. It must not be overlooked, moreover, that many bodies have the capacity of absorbing light rays of shorter wave-length, and, on the other hand, of giving out rays of greater wave-length. It is precisely those pigments which are distributed in plants, again above all, chlorophyll, which possesses this property called fluorescence; and we must therefore also assign this significance to chlorophyll, that it can transform rays of light which are useless in the synthesis of organic materials into those which show the best possible action in this respect. If the fluorescing pigments of plants (chlorophyll, anthocyanin, phycoérythrin) can transform the violet and blue rays into yellow and red, it is to be supposed that their activity goes further, and that they will be able to change rays of small wave-length and higher refrangibility into rays which are found beyond the red, which are imperceptible to our eyes, and which possess very great heat-giving powers, or, in other words, that they will be able to transform light into heat. From all this it may be seen that the significance of chlorophyll in the formation of organic materials would be three- fold. First, a retention or extinction of those rays which might hinder the formation of those compounds known by the name of carbohydrates; further, the transformation of rays with short wave-length into those of longer wave-length, which, according to experience, most favourably effect the production of sugar and starch; and, finally, the conversion of light into heat, and ultimately into latent heat. CHLOROPHYLL-GRANULES AND THE GREEN TISSUE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF VARIOUS DEGREES OF ILLUMINATION. If it is beyond question that organic materials can only be formed from the absorbed carbonic acid in the presence of chlorophyll, it is, on the other hand, equally certain that the sun creates and works through these formative processes by its rays, and thus, as the propelling force, becomes the fountain of all organic life. The sun rises and sets, day follows night, and during the night the process just men- tioned, upon which the existence of the living world depends, is interrupted. But even in the daytime also, the strength of the sun is very unequal; it is one thing at mid-day, when the source of light is in the zenith and the rays fall perpendicularly on the earth, and quite another in the evening, as the illuminating orb sinks below the horizon and the last rays spread almost horizontally over the surface. Clearly it is anything but a matter of indifference to the organs possessing a certain 380 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. amount of chlorophyll in what manner the sun’s rays light upon them, or what quantity of vital force is transmitted to them in a given time. Various species of plants may make very different demands for sunlight, but for each individual species the need of propelling force fluctuates only within very narrow limits, which cannot be exceeded without injury. The greatest possible equality in the supply of propelling force is an indispensable condition of a successful career. In order to meet the inequality in the flow of light on bright and dull days, and also during various parts of the day, it is arranged that the green organs can turn towards the sun, and that according to the hour of the day and the strength of the sun’s rays at that particular time, they can take up a definite position, and again alter this position with ease. And, indeed, the green chlorophyll-granules in the interior of the cells also show this capability of accommodating themselves in accordance with the demand for light as well as the entire cells, and, finally, even the green leaves, together with the stems and branches which bear them. If one would obtain a clear idea of the withdrawal of the chlorophyll-granules from the sunlight, one must remember, first of all, that these green bodies, what- ever may be their form, are imbedded in the protoplasm of the cell, and that the protoplasm is mobile and easily capable of displacement—or, in other words, that the protoplasm which contains the green chlorophyll-granules twists and rotates within the cell it inhabits, and can transport the granules hither and thither. Still more. Chlorophyll-granules can be temporarily heaped up and crowded together in definite places; they may again be separated from one another, and distributed equally throughout the whole cell-body. In the tubular cells of Vaucheria clavata, represented in figure a@ on Plate I, the protoplasm forms a lining layer on the inner side of the colourless transparent cell-wall, and is so thickly studded with round chlorophyll-granules that the cell appears of a uniform dark green. But this is only the case with light of moderate intensity. When strongly illumi- nated the chlorophyll-granules move apart from one another, arrange themselves in isolated balls, and in a very short time, in each tubular cell, dark-green spots and zones may be seen corresponding to the crowded granules, and light, irregular bands appearing in those places from which the chlorophyll has been withdrawn. If the intensity of the light diminishes, the green clusters dissolve, and the former equal distribution and colouring is resumed. In another filamentous green alga, which lives in water and belongs to the genus Mesocarpus, each of the long cylindrical cells contains a plate-like chlorophyll body, which in weak diffuse light turns itself at right angles to the incident rays. In this position the broad side, i.e. the larger surface of the chlorophyll body, is turned to the sun, and the incident light is in this way utilized to the utmost possible extent. As the plate-like chlorophyll body usually extends right across the cell, under the conditions indicated, the cell appears of a uniform green colour. If the full rays of the sun fall on such Mesocarpus cells, the plate-like chlorophyll bodies begin to turn so that the plane of the plate is parallel to the direction of the rays. Now the narrow side, i.e. the smaller surface of the chlorophyll body, is turned to the rays, and only a dark-green CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 381 stripe is to be seen. This turning movement of the chlorophyll body is very quickly performed, and can be repeatedly effected by darkening and illuminating the cells of the Mesocarpus filament. In cells, too, which are joined together to form tissues, this displacement and movement of the chlorophyll-granules often appears. It has been noticed for a long time that in the prothallium of ferns, in the leaf-like liverworts, in the leaflets of many mosses, and even in the large, delicate foliage-leaves of flowering plants, the green tissue appears to be coloured a lighter or darker green according to the intensity of the incident light; that under the influence of intense sunlight they become blanched and yellowish-green, but in weak light assume a darker tint. If a strip of black paper be placed on a foliage-leaf, illuminated by the sun, so that only a portion of the leaf-surface is covered by it, and if the paper be removed after a short time, the portion left uncovered and illuminated by the uninterrupted rays of the sun appears light green, while that part on which lay the strip of paper, and from which the sun’s rays were withheld, is dark green. Careful investigations have shown that this change of colour is due to displacement of the chlorophyll- granules. In diffuse light the chlorophyll-granules group themselves on those cell- walls on whose surface the light falls perpendicularly, and consequently in the cylindrical palisade cells of the foliage-leaf on the small walls parallel to its upper surface, and it is clear that such cells (and therefore the tissue formed by them) have a dark-green appearance when looked at in the direction of the incident light. As soon as they are illuminated by direct sunlight, the chlorophyll-granules retire from these walls and take up their position on the cell-walls which are parallel to the direction of the incident light. In palisade cells the chlorophyll-granules group themselves by the side of the long lateral walls, while the short walls, which are at right angles to the rays, are colourless and free from chlorophyll. In the branched cells of the spongy parenchyma the chlorophyll-granules, which in diffuse light were equally distributed in the cell, heap themselves together in groups in the branches, while the central portions of the cells become clear and free from chlorophyll. The whole tissue, however, in which this displacement has been completed appears much paler than before, and displays usually a decidedly yellowish-green tint. This change of position of the granules, according to the intensity of illumination, may be particularly well seen in the very simply constructed leaf-like duckweed, especially in Lemna trisulca. Three sections of the green tissue of this plant, vertical to the surface, are shown in fig. 97. With these phenomena is indeed also connected the alteration of shape which is observed under varied illumination in chlorophyll-granules. In the leaflets of Funaria hygrometrica, a moss very common on piles of charcoal, damp walls, and rocks, the chlorophyll-granules, which are close to the outer walls of the cells, are flattened out, angular, and comparable to small polygonal tablets, in diffuse light. They are also so arranged that the entire wall covered by them appears an uniform green, and only narrow, colourless lines remain between them. As soon as direct sunlight falls on them they quickly alter their shape, the tablets becoming hemi- 382 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. spherical or spherical bodies, which project towards the centre of the cell-cavity. By this means the area of the chlorophyll-granules attached to the cell-wall is contracted, and consequently the green of the leaf-surface in question is diminished. In the leaves of many flowering plants, also, the chlorophyll-granules which are distributed in the palisade-cells along the elongated side-walls appear, in diffuse light, hemispherical or even conical, and project towards the centre of the cells so that they are illuminated to the greatest possible extent by the light rays passing through. Under the influence of direct sunlight they flatten out, become disc- shaped, and withdraw to some extent from the bright rays passing through the centre of the cells. The significance of all these processes, the changes of shape as well as the displacements of the chlorophyll-granules, is evident when it is considered that an over-abundance as well as a deficiency of light would be prejudicial, and that for every species the quantity of the sun’s rays absorbed by the chlorophyll-granules is definite. Protoplasm, provided with chlorophyll, Fig. 97.—Position of the Chlorophyll-granules in the cells of the Ivy-leaved Duckweed (Lemna trisulca). 1In darkness. 2In direct sunlight. 3 In diffuse light. tries under all circumstances to obtain this definite amount. When weakly illuminated, chlorophyll-granules maintain a shape and position in consequence of which they present the largest possible surface to the light; when strongly illumi- nated, they assume a shape and position by which the smallest possible surface is soexposed. These processes, especially the displacement of the chlorophyll-granules, obtain a heightened interest from the fact that they can only be brought about by the streaming movements of the irritable protoplasm. It must be borne in mind that it is really living protoplasm which displaces the chlorophyll-granules imbedded in it in order to bring them to the places best suited to the illumination then existing, and to place them in sunlight or shade; so that it always happens that the displaced green bodies are neither too much nor too little illuminated. Many unicellular water-plants, especially zoospores, attain the same result not by displacement of the chlorophyll-granules in the interior, but by movements of the entire cells. These green unicellular organisms may be seen swimming towards the light by means of their cilia, and in this way they take up the position always best adapted to the given conditions. If many swarm-spores are collected together in a limited area, it may happen that they all travel to one particular place; there they swarm about in the water and appear to the naked eye like a little green cloud. Or they may settle on the bottom of the pool, there arranging them- selves side by side, so that no one deprives another of light, and they then appear CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 383 to the naked eye as green stripes and patches. If swarm-cells of Spherella pluvialis are cultivated in a flat white china dish filled with rain-water, and one- half of the dish is darkened by means of an opaque body while the other half remains illuminated, the whole of the swarm-cells swim from the darkened to the illuminated water in order to take up a position as favourable as possible with regard to the light. If now the china dish is turned round so that the hitherto illumined portion becomes darkened and light falls on the part previously obscured, the swarm-cells forsake the position which they had recently taken up, swim from the now darkened place to the illuminated side opposite, and arrange themselves there according as the illuminating conditions are favourable. If, instead of the Spherella pluvialis discussed above, clumps of Vawucheria clavata are cultivated in a china dish filled with water, and the water is again partially darkened, together with the green tufts growing in it, it will be seen that the cells, which are elongated and fixed at one end, seek with the other end those places where they can find the best light. Vaucheria clavata, which has been repeatedly cited as an example, and which is represented in the middle figure on Plate I, consists of long tubular cells, frequently bulging and branched, whose blunt growing ends appear dark green, while the lower dead portions are branched and coloured yellowish-white. The protoplasm is so richly studded with chlorophyll- granules that the entire inner wall of the tubular cells appears covered with a green lining. At the bottom of shallow pools, which is the natural habitat of these plants, they form hemispherical clumps, and all the tubular cells which compose the clumps have their green ends directed upwards towards the source of light. The same thing occurs when the Vaucheria cultivated in the china dish is uniformly illumined from above; but, if partially obscured, those filaments over which the darkening shadow is thrown very quickly alter their position. They bend towards the light side, and then the clump looks just as if its filaments had been combed in this direction. Moreover, the same thing is also seen when the china dish containing clumps of Vaucheria (on which until now diffused light has fallen uniformly from above) is placed at the further end of a one-windowed room, so that the light can only reach it from one side. Here, again, all the filaments, or rather, tubular cells of the clump, bend towards the source of light, and if they continue to grow, the increase in length is universally in a line with the direction of the incident rays. After a few days these Vawcheria clumps also look as if they had been combed out. The green tissues of thallophytes, and the green leaves and stems of ferns, and phanerogams, 7.c. those extensive combinations of green cells whose function is to work in a harmonious manner, and to manufacture organic substances for the plant to which they belong from carbonic acid with the help of other food- materials; these behave in the same way as the individual green cells which swim freely in water, and as the tubular cells of Vaucheria, which are attached at one end. Arrangements are necessary for these likewise, by which they can always be placed in the most favourable light. Of course, in these plants where 384 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. division of labour has been so far developed, the conditions are not so simple as in those plants which consist only of single cells, and it is naturally to be expected that, according to the character of the individual species and the places which they inhabit, the arrangements would be very varied. The fact must also be kept in mind that each spot on which a plant has settled itself in the course of time may undergo alterations in consequence of which the amount and strength of the light affecting that part varies considerably. Long-lived plants, which grow vigorously in height and breadth, alter in their relation to the sun in various stages of growth, and must also alter their form in a corresponding manner, or, at least, must alter the direction and position of their green tissues. All this requires a multiplicity of contrivances which are, as a matter of fact, innumerable, and the exhaustive treatment of which is scarcely possible. In order to obtain a general view, it will be better to pick out some of the most remarkable of the long series of arrangements whose significance lies in this, that each species of plant receives for its green organs neither too much nor too little light, and to describe them in their relations to light as types of smaller or larger groups. We will begin with those arrangements which are rendered necessary by a peculiar habitat, and, first of all, we will investigate those plants which have taken up their quarters in caves or grottoes, and there pass through all their stages of development. In deep excavations shut off entirely from the light, as well as in those which have been formed without human interference, and those which have been dug in order to obtain metal ore, coal, salt, and water, plants with chlorophyll-bearing cells and tissues are completely wanting. The plants which we find there consist only of pale fungi, which live on the scanty organic compounds which the infiltrating rain-water brings with it into the depths from the surface of the sunny land above, or which have established themselves on organic decaying bodies brought there by chance or intentionally by animals and men. It is otherwise in caves, mines, grottoes, pits, and wells, where light is able to penetrate from above or from the sides, even if only through a comparatively small aperture. Truly the vegetation developed there is not very luxuriant, but it is a very remarkable circumstance that there, as a rule, the plants are still green. What actually astonishes one at first sight of this vegetation, flourishing in caves illuminated only from one side, is the fact that they exhibit the most beautiful and vigorous green, a green much fresher, indeed, and more pronounced than that displayed by the plants outside. Thus the Hart’s Tongue (Scolopendriwm officinarum), widely distributed in Southern Europe, when adorning the deep shady walls of rocky ravines is coloured a much brighter green than when it grows on stony places in the open country where light can reach it from all sides. Also the liver- worts which cover the damp stones with their leaf-like thallus, in grottoes through which waters ripple, show there in the half-light a distinctly richer green than when outside the grotto. But this phenomenon is most striking in the prothallia of some ferns belonging to the section of the Hymenophyllacex, and in many mosses. A tiny moss, called popularly the Luminous Moss, but which has received from CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 385 botanists the name Schistostega osmundacea, has even attained a certain celebrity on this account. It is found distributed throughout the Central European granite and slate mountains, but is only to be met with in clefts of the rocks, caves and similar spots. As a rule it covers the yellow, clayey earth and the decayed and disintegrated pieces of stone which form the soil of these caverns and small grottoes. On looking into the interior of the cave, the background appears quite dark, and an ill-defined twilight only appears to fall from the centre on to the side walls; but on the level floor of the cave innumerable golden-green points of light sparkle and gleam, so that it might be imagined that small emeralds had been scattered over the ground. If we reach curiously into the depth of the grotto to snatch a specimen of the shining objects, and examine the prize in our hand under a bright light, we can scarcely believe our eyes, for there is nothing else but dull lustreless earth and damp, mouldering bits of stone of a yellowish-grey colour. Only on looking closer will it be noticed that the soil and stones are studded and spun over in parts with dull green dots and delicate threads, and that, moreover, there appears a delicate filigree of tiny moss-plants rising star-like, pale bluish- green in colour, and resembling a small arched feather stuck in the ground. This phenomenon, that an object should only shine in dark rocky clefts, and immediately lose its brilliance when it is brought into the bright daylight, is so surprising that one can easily understand how the legends have arisen of fantastic gnomes, and cave-inhabiting goblins who allow the covetous sons of earth to gaze on the gold and precious stones, but prepare the bitter disappointment for the seeker of the enchanted treasure; that, when he empties out the treasure which he has hastily raked together in the cave, he sees roll out of the sacks, not glittering jewels, but only common earth. It has been mentioned that on the floor of rocky caves one may discern by careful examination two kinds of insignificant-looking plant-structures, one a web of threads studded with small crumbling bodies, and the other bluish-green moss- plants resembling tiny feathers. The threads form the so-called protonema, and the green moss-plants grow up as a second generation from this protonema. How this comes about will be described in another place; here it only interests us that the gleams do not issue from the green moss-plants, but only from their protonema. If this is viewed under the microscope a sight is presented like that depicted in fig. p on Plate I. From the much-branched threads, composed of tubular cells, which spread horizontally over the ground, numerous twigs rise up vertically, bearing groups of spherical cells arranged like bunches of grapes. All the cells of a group lie in one plane, and each of these planes is at right angles to the rays of light entering through the aperture of the rocky cleft. The grape-like groups of cells have longer or shorter stalks, but they always appear in rows side by side and behind one another, placed cup-like, that the anterior groups do not deprive those behind them of too much of the light which enters the cavity. Each of the spherical cells contains chlorophyll-granules, but in small number; usually four, six, eight, or ten and they are always collected together on those os of the OL. I. 386 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. cells which are turned towards the dark background of the cave. There they are grouped like a mosaic, and usually so that one green granule forms the centre, while the others surround it very regularly in a circle. Such groups remind one of the arrangement of the floral-leaves in Forget-me-not flowers, and give a very ornamental appearance to the cells. Taken together, these chlorophyll-granules form a layer, which, under a low power of the microscope, appears as a round green spot. With the exception of these chlorophyll-granules the contents of the cell are colourless and transparent, and share these characteristics with the unusually delicate cell-wall. The light which falls on such cells through the opening of a rocky cleft behaves like the light which reaches a glass globe at the further end of a dark room. The parallel incident rays which arrive at the globe are so refracted that they form a cone of light, and since the hinder surface of the globe is within this cone, a bright disc appears on it. If this disc, on which the refracted rays of light fall, is furnished with a lining, this also will be comparatively strongly- illuminated by the light concentrated on it, and will stand out from the darker surroundings as a bright circular patch. This lining has the power of manufac- turing organic substances in the spherical cells of the protonema of the Luminous Moss, and in this way the scanty incident light is turned to the greatest possible advantage; it is refracted and concentrated on those places where the chlorophy]ll- granules are situated, and consequently these receive in the dark recesses an amount of light which amply suffices for their special functions. It is well worthy of notice that the patch of green chlorophyll-granules on the hinder side of the spherical cell extends exactly so far as it is illumined by the refracted rays, while beyond this region, where there is no illumination, no chlorophyll- granules are to be seen. The refracted rays which fall on the round green spot are, moreover, only partially absorbed; in part they are reflected back as from a concave mirror, and these reflected rays. give the cells of the protonema a luminous appearance. This phenomenon, therefore, has the greatest resemblance to the appearance of light which the eyes of cats and other animals display in half-dark places, only illumined from one side, and so does not depend upon a chemical process, an oxidation, as perhaps does the light of the glow-worm or of the mycelium of fungi which grows on decxying wood. Since the reflected light-rays take the same path as the incident rays had taken, it is clear that the gleams of the Schastostega can only be seen when the eye is in the line of the incident rays of light. In consequence of the small extent of the aperture through which the light penetrates into the rock cleft, it is not always easy to get a good view of the phenomenon described. If we hold the head close to the opening, we thereby prevent the entrance of the light, and obviously in that case no light can be reflected. It is, therefore, better when looking into the cave to place one’s self so that some light at anyrate may reach its depths. Then the spectacle has indeed an indescribable charm. What has just been said about the isolated cells is exemplified in groups of cells placed behind one another, of which usually many thousands are found in a very small area. CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 387 Among the mosses which find their home in deep shady places, principally in hollow tree-trunks, and are noticeable there for their glossy green, Hookeria splendens is especially worthy of attention. To be sure, its leaves do not shine as brightly as the protonema of Schistostega, but the appearance is, on the whole, much the same, and here also a similar development is the cause. The leaves of Hookeria are comparatively large, but at the same time very thin and delicate. They are composed of a single layer of rhombie cells, very convex above and below, so that the whole leaf may be compared to some extent to a window with very small so-called “)bull’s eyes” in the glass. The chlorophyll-granules are here arranged with far less regularity than in the protonema of the Luminous Moss, but they are heaped together just as in that plant on the side of the leaf facing the ground, that is to say, which is turned from the light. The side which is turned in the direction of the scanty incident light has no chlorophyll layer. The hemispherically- convex cells, opposed to this scanty light which falls on one side of the leaf, act like glass lenses; they concentrate the weak light on the chlorophyll-granules heaped up on the other side; but, on the other hand, light is also reflected, and this gives rise to the green lustre with which the Hookeria shines forth from its dim sur- roundings. Like those plants which inhabit rocks, grottoes, and stone clefts, and the shady obscurity of hollow trunks, plants whose habitat is at the bottom of the sea, and in the depths of lakes and ponds, are only visited by weakened sunbeams. The illumination becomes the dimmer the deeper the habitat in question lies below the surface of the water, since the intensity of the light penetrating the water dimin- ishes with the increasing length of the distance travelled. At a depth of 200 metres under the sea complete darkness reigns; at 170 metres the intensity of illumination is like that observed above the water on a moonlight night; such an illumination is insufficient to enable chlorophyll-bearing plants to manufacture organic substances from the absorbed raw materials, even although the plants were provided with all possible aids for the collection of this exceedingly weak light. It is only at a depth of not more than 90 metres that light is sufficient for the chlorophyll cells to decompose carbonic acid, and this depth is ascertained to be the lowest limit of chlorophyll-bearing plants. Moreover, these figures are only applicable in the most favourable circumstances in broad daylight, and only when the water is very clear and transparent, which really only seldom occurs, we might even say excep- tionally. The substratum on which the submerged plants are situated, whether sand, mud, or rock, is usually sloping, and is most visited by the oblique rays of the sun. Frequently also small solid particles are suspended in the water, even in water which in the aggregate appears to be quite clear, and so the light is again con- siderably weakened. This happens especially in the neighbourhood of steep coasts, where the seething of the waves works uninterruptedly at the destruction of the solid shore, and consequently at a depth of 60 metres on such steep declivities, plants possessing chlorophyll are seldom met with. Generally speaking, the vegetation in the sea is limited to a zone of about 30 metres 388 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. in depth, whose width varies with the steepness of the shore. Below this narrow girdle, vegetation is practically extinguished, and the depths of the ocean are in all parts of the globe a plantless waste. This statement is not contradicted by the fact that sea-wracks have been found showing a length of 100, it is alleged even of 200 and 300 metres, as, for example, the celebrated Macrocystis pyrifera, between New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego. These sea-wracks do not rise perpendicularly from the bottom to the surface of the sea, but proceed from steep declivities, and grow at an angle to the surface, on which account they often take the direction of the current. One must imagine their position in the water to be almost like that of the Floating Pondweed, or the Water Crowfoot (Potamogeton fluitans and Ranunculus flwitans), which occur in brooks only a few decimetres deep, and nevertheless may attain a length of more than a metre. It is naturally to be expected that plants which grow in the dim light, deep under the water on a rocky reef, would behave exactly like the grotto-inhabiting Luminous Moss; and if the barrel-shaped and spherical cell-structures connected into chains, the cyst-like and berry-shaped outgrowths of the unicellular Caulerpas and Halimedas, as well as the facetted cell-walls of those diatoms living in the abysses of the sea in dim twilight, are accepted as contrivances by which light is collected and focussed on those places within the cells where the chlorophyll-bodies are heaped up, then no mistake will be made. Several of the sea-inhabiting Floridec and sea-wracks belonging to the genera Phylocladia, Polysiphonia, Wrangelia, and Cystostra, even exhibit under the water a peculiar luminosity which may be compared with that of the Luminous Moss, although the optical apparatus is here essentially different, In the superficial cells of the luminous Phylocladias are to be found plates segregated out of the protoplasm and closely adhering to the outer walls, which contain a large number of small crowded lenticular bodies. From these minute lenses the blue and green rays are chiefly reflected, and thus the peculiar iridescence is produced. But, on the other hand, yellow and red rays are refracted on to the chlorophyll-granules, and consequently these plates must be regarded as an apparatus for focussing the light, which, by its passage through the thick layers of water, has undergone a considerable diminution. In the depths of the sea, however, another optical phenomenon must be taken account of, by which the illumination of chlorophyll-granules in the plants growing there becomes in the end a favourable one, and that is the fluorescence of erythro- phyll, the fluorescence of that red pigment to which the Florides owe their charac- teristic colour. In order to make this phenomenon clear, it seems necessary first of all, to rectify a wide-spread error with regard to the colour of water generally, and particularly of sea-water. In the very attractively-written work by Schleiden, The Plant and its Lofe, the seventh chapter, which treats of the sea and its inhabitants, begins with the following lines:—*O learn to know them, the horrible deeps, which are concealed beneath the shining treacherous surface. You descend, the blue of the sky vanishes, the light of day is gone, a fiery yellow surrounds you, then a flaming red, as if you were plunged into a watery sea-hell, without CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 389 glow and without warmth. ‘The red becomes darker, purple, finally black, and impenetrable night holds you enchained”. This description is founded doubtless on the account of divers of the olden time, according to which red light should predominate in the abysses of the ocean. These accounts must, however, be retained only to the following extent. The cliffs and the rocky bottom to which the divers descended might have been richly carpeted with red Floride, possibly also just then the strata of water above were filled with those unicellular red alge, which cause the so-called “flowers of the sea”. In the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Tejo at times a superficial area of sixty million of square metres is coloured scarlet by Protococcus Atlanticus, a unicellular alga, 40,000 of which cover only a square millimetre; and Trichodesmiwm Lrythreum, another microscopic alga consisting of bundles of delicate articulated threads in innumerable milliards, fills the watery strata in the Red Sea as well as in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, so that there immeasurable stretches of water receive a dingy red colouring. When these alge make their appearance the sea is said to blossom, and at those times the depths may appear to the diver as shrouded in a reddish-yellow twilight. At times the same colour has even been observed in the Lake of Geneva when its waters had been disturbed; it is due to the fact that the blue rays of the incident light are weakened by the fine atoms suspended in the water. With respect to this occurrence, we may consider that the above-mentioned accounts of divers are not the results of intentional decep- tion, but only refer to particular cases. They cannot be applied universally. As a matter of fact, the colour of sea-water, in direct as well as in reflected light, is blue, and the diver who carries on his work at the bottom of the untroubled and non-blossoming sea, is not surrounded there by red, but by blue light. The greater the quantity of salt contained in the water, the deeper the blue. This blue nowhere appears so beautiful and so deep in tint as in the Dead Sea, and in the region of the Gulf Stream and of the Kurosiur, where the water is particularly rich in dissolved salts, and also has in the upper strata a comparatively high tem- perature. The blue colour of the water is explained thus: from among the ‘ays which are characterized by different wave-lengths and different refrangibility (which, taken together, form colourless daylight, and which we admire separated in the colours of the rainbow), the red, orange, and yellow are absorbed in their passage through the water, and only those rays which are characterized by high refrangibility, viz. the blue, are allowed to pass through. The rays on the further side of the red, not perceptible to our eyes, the so-called dark heat-rays, are like- wise absorbed in their passage through the water, and an object at some depth under water would therefore only be reached by rays of high refrangibility, particularly blue rays. The conditions of illumination for plants growing in the depths of the ocean are consequently in reality quite unfavourable. It is not only that a portion of the light falling on the surface of the water is reflected, and the other portion is weakened by its passage through the water, but besides, those rays which are necessary to the formation of organic matter by the chlorophyll-granules in the 390 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. plant cells are abstracted from the light which passes through; for the chlorophyll- granules need just the red, yellow, and orange rays if they are to perform their functions; only under the influence of these rays can the decomposition of carbonic acid, the separation of oxygen, and the formation of carbohydrates, take place. The blue rays do not assist at all in this respect; they are even hurtful to these processes, since they assist the oxidation, that is, the decomposition of organic substance. Consequently, phycoérythrin, the red pigment of the Floridex, now appears, and indeed so abundantly, that the chlorophyll-granules in the interior are quite hidden by it. This colouring-matter displays a very marked fluorescence, that is to say, it absorbs a large portion of the light rays falling on it, and gives out other rays of greater wave-length. The blue rays are to some extent changed by it to yellow, orange, and red, and thus the chlorophyll-granules finally receive those rays which act as the propelling force in the decomposition of carbonie acid. But this also affords an explanation of the remarkable phenomenon that sea- plants are only coloured green close to the shore, and only in the most superficial layers of water, while lower down they appear red. Only quite on the surface the emerald-like Ulvacess and Entermorphas sway hither and thither, forming thus a light-green belt; these alge are to be sought for in vain in the depths beneath; of the plants which flourish below this region it can no longer be said that they grow green; this mark of vegetation has entirely vanished. Green has given place to red. All the innumerable Floridee are reddened—sometimes a delicate carmine, sometimes a deep purple; then again a light brownish-red and a dull, dark crimson, and as we admire in the bush the innumerable gradations of green colour, so is the eye delighted in the manifold shades of red, in which the different variegated species of Floridez, intermixing with one another, display themselves. Let us now leave the blue twilight of the sea-depths, and set foot on the strand lapped by the blue waves sparkling with white foam, and climb up one of the rocky crags rising there above the seething waters. Around us is the bright daylight, and broad terraces of rock thickly overgrown with plants, all brilliantly ilumined ’ by the unclouded sun. But where is that fresh green which we expect to find up here according to the foregoing definitions in herbs and bushes? Here are not green, but grey foliage and branches, white-haired stems and leaves, and the whole woven and bound together into a carpet, which looks as if it had been strewn with ashes, or as if the wind had for a week brought hither the dust from the neigh- bouring streets and deposited it. The plants here on the sunny rocks have pro- vided themselves with silky, woolly, and felted coverings for the purpose of softening the too glaring light. In the depths of the sea and in the grottoes of the slate rocks, the light was too weak; here, however, it is too strong. The chlorophyll- granules tolerate neither the one nor the other; they require light of a definite intensity. If the limit, which in this matter is exactly defined for each species, is overstepped, the chlorophyll is destroyed. Too much light may be no less injurious to the plants than if the chlorophyll-granules are condemned to inactivity on account of the want of light. CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 391 How quickly a glaring light is able to destroy the chlorophyll can be well seen in the green Sea-lettuce on the shore below. In a high sea a violent wave tears fragments of the Ulvaces, known under the name of Sea-lettuce, from the coast- rocks; a second wave as it rushes up washes the leaf-like structures on to the shingle of the shore, and there it remains with other débris lying amongst the stones. The sea now becomes calm, the sky has cleared, the sun’s rays are again burning with undiminished strength on the shadeless strand. As long as the Sea- lettuce adhered closely to the rocks below the surface of the water it displayed a brilliant emerald green; the water in which it was submerged to some little depth, even at a low tide, sufficed to somewhat temper the sunlight; but the stranded Ulva is deprived of this light-regulating covering of water, and in a few hours its chlorophyll is destroyed. It is turned yellow, and looks like a lettuce-leaf which has lain for a week ina dark cellar. A similar appearance is also seen in confervas and spirogyras which fill stagnant pools of water with their masses of united fila- ments. Two decimetres below the water they display a beautiful dark-green colour, while close to the surface they appear a yellowish-green, and if the pool dries up so that the masses of filament come to lie on the damp slime, in two days they are quite bleached; the undimmed sunlight has completely destroyed the chlorophyll in the cells. In the depth of beech-groves the Woodruff (Asperula odorata) raises its leaves arranged in whorls on the stem; over it the thickly-leaved branches of the beeches bend together, forming a roof through whose interstices only here and there a weak sunbeam finds its way into the depths. In the dim light the leaf-stars of the Woodruff appear of a deep, dark-green tint. Now the axe of the woodcutter resounds through the forest—the beeches are felled, the shading roof of foliage is demolished, and the floor of the wood is exposed to the glaring sunbeams. Within two weeks the Woodruff can no longer be recognized; it has become sickly and pale; the leaf-stars have lost their dark green, and the chlorophyll has been destroyed by the glaring light. The same thing occurs with ferns as with the Woodruff. In the dimness of the floor of the forest, between steep-walled rocks, and on shady northern declivities they are tinted dark green; in sunny situations they become pale, and then are noticeably retarded in growth. All these plants are not organized to adapt themselves, in the case of an alteration of the illumination of their habitat, to the new conditions and to protect themselves from the undimmed rays falling on them. They are only fitted for the shady floor of the wood, and an over-abundance of light is their death. But how is the vegetation protected in a habitat where during the whole of the vegetative period full light predominates, where the sun makes itself felt from rise to setting with uninterrupted power? It has already been pointed out that the plants on the broad ridges and terraces of the rocky shores of the Mediterranean are shrouded in dull grey, clothed in silk or wool, or else overstrewn with chaff-like scales, and consequently have lost their fresh green colour. In reality it is not quite correct to say that they have “lost” the green, for their parenchymatous cells, especially those of the palisade and spongy tissues in the foliage-leaves, are no less 392 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. rich in chlorophyll-granules than those of shaded plants, only they have developed from their epidermal cells those structures which have been previously described as covering hairs. These cellular structures, devoid of chlorophyll, cover over the green tissue, and thus give to the leaf in question a grey or white colour. They play the part of awnings and light-extinguishers, and when they are removed the leaf appears just as green as one that has been plucked from the shade of the wood. Silky, velvety, and woolly coats may thus doubtless take. on the function of extinguishers. We meet, therefore, the same contrivances apparently which already on a previous occasion have been treated of, viz. when describing the protective measures against excessive transpiration. Thus through these structures two birds are killed with one stone. All contrivances which keep off too glaring sunbeams, and thereby hinder the destruction of chlorophyll, at the same time diminish trans- piration; and inasmuch as these contrivances perform two such important functions for the life of plants, their wide distribution and great diversity is accounted for. Suited to the conditions, adapted to the habitat and season of the year, and in harmony with other developments, they change in a thousand ways, and thus display a diversity which can scarcely be treated exhaustively. Besides the covering hairs which are placed above the green tissue, as a protection and shade against too intense light, and at the same time against excessive transpiration, obviously all the other contrivances previously described are to be taken into account. The development of one or several layers of cells, filled with watery cell-sap, above the tissue exposed to the sun’s rays, the thickening of the cuticular layers, the waxy and varnish-like coatings, the lime incrustations and salt excretions, the diminution of the illuminated portion of the leaf-surface, the formation of wrinkles, folds, pits, and grooves on the illumined surface of the foliage—all these are able to interrupt and diminish the rays and to reduce their intensity to the right degree. The number of the special contrivances which simply secure chlorophyll from destruction by too glaring light, without at the same time protecting the green tissue from excessive transpiration, must indeed be very small. First of all, we may mention the dry thin-skinned scales which in many plants are inserted between the green leaves. These are seen, for example, in species of the genus Paronychia, which in masses have their habitat in sunny places, and produce silver-glittering transparent scales, devoid of chlorophyll, close to that portion of the stem from which the small green leaves originate. These scales, which are designated stipules, and which, here, are usually as large, occasionally even larger, than the green leaves, take up naturally such a position in the plants growing on shadeless hillocks that the sun’s rays first of all fall on them, and only reach the green leaflets in a weakened state. Another arrangement, which indeed is able to restrict the destruction of the chlorophyll by the sun’s rays, without affecting transpiration, consists in the development of a blue or violet colouring-matter in those cells which compose the superficial covering of the leaves and stem which is directly illuminated by the sun’s CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY, 393 rays. Such an arrangement is found, for example, in the leaves of the aromatic Satureja hortensis, originally growing wild in the Mediterranean floral district, and cultivated in gardens under the name of Summer Savory, of which leaves a small portion is represented in cross section on Plate I., fig. g, printed in colours. Before the sunbeam reaches the chlorophyll-granules of the green cells in the middle of the leaf, it must pass through these epidermal cells filled with violet sap, and here it becomes so weakened and also so changed that an injurious influence on the chlorophyll-granules is out of the question. We must not omit to notice here that the violet light-reducing colouring-matter in the epidermal cells is more abundantly developed the intenser the light to which the plants in question are exposed. If plants of the Summer Savory grow in shady places, their leaves remain green on the upper sides, and scarcely any traces of the violet colouring-matter are to be discovered in the epidermal cells. If, on the other hand, they have germinated in shadeless districts, both stem and leaves are coloured dark violet, and the cell-sap in the epidermal cells is then of that deep tint shown in Plate I, fig. g. Some years ago I cultivated seeds of the Summer Savory in my experimental garden at a height of 2195 metres above the sea-level in the Tyrol. As is known, the sun’s rays are much more powerful in the Alpine heights than in the valley, and it was therefore, indeed, to be expected that the leaves of the germinating plants would be of a much darker tint than in the shadeless gardens of the valley below. In fact, the colouring- matter developed in extraordinary abundance; even the stems and leaves actually became a dark brownish violet. It is, therefore, beyond question that the quantity of colouring-matter in the epidermal cells directly exposed to the sun increases with the increase of the intensity of the light. Obviously this protection of the chlorophyll can only occur when the plants possess the materials for forming the pink colouring-matter in their green organs. When this is not possible, when the characteristic constitution of the protoplasm does not permit the development of the colouring-matter named in the foliage-leaves, the chlorophyll must be pro- tected against the glaring light in another way, and if the plant species is not able to ward off the over-abundance of sunlight in the new position, it perishes entirely. Flax (Linum usitatissimwm) was sown next to the Summer Savory in the Alpine experimental garden—a plant which bears the direct sunlight quite well, and flourishes in the valley as well as in the plains in sunny situations. However, the light of the Alpine region was too brilliant for the germinating flax- plants; the leaves turned yellow, their chlorophyll was destroyed, and the seedlings became pale and perished. Flax has not the capacity of manufacturing the colouring-matter in its superficial cells, and it is also not organized to produce covering hairs on the leaves and stem, or to thicken its cuticular strata suitably— in a word, to adapt itself to the position and to provide itself, under the increased light intensity, with corresponding sun-shades and light-extinguishers. While close at hand, the Summer Savory, which requires just as much warmth, and an equally long vegetative period as flax, reached the flowering stage, and even produced ripe fruits capable of germinating, the flax died before the development of its flowers. \ 394 CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. From these culture experiments two things may be learned: first, that a very brilliant light is able to influence the distribution of plants and to set up an impassable barrier for many of them; and secondly, that many plants have the capacity of adapting themselves to various degrees of light intensity; but in conse- quence of this they occasionally develop such a varying character that they might be mistaken for wholly cifferent species. But I shall return again later when speaking of the origin of new species to this result of cultivation. Here we shall only discuss, in order to prove and make clear the connection between certain plant characteristics and the conditions of illumination, how it happens that the surface of foliage exposed to the direct rays of the sun is so frequently coloured violet or red, or is completely covered over with hairs, while the leaves of the same species if they have been developed on shady soil in dispersed light are coloured green, and remain almost bare; how it happens that plants of one and the same species in the deep valleys possess but few hairs, or are provided with but thin cuticular layers, but on the sunny slopes of high mountains are shrouded in thick grey or white fur, or appear thick and almost leathery in consequence of strongly-developed cuticular layers. In order to prevent misconception, it must indeed be pointed out here that all this only refers to the epidermis over the green tissue which is exposed to direct or diffuse sunlight, chiefly, therefore, to the wpper side of the foliage-leaf, and that when the blue colouring-matter and also the covering hairs are developed on the under side of the leaf, or in floral leaves devoid of chlorophyll, they have then an essentially different significance, which will be described in the next section. When describing the protective measures of the green tissues against the dangers of over-transpiration, the vertical direction of branches, flattened shoots, phyllodes, and especially of the green leaf-surfaces, was pointed out. The leaves of irises, and of the so-called compass-plants, the flattened outspread petioles, with their edge directed towards the zenith, in so many Australian trees and shrubs, were there more especially described, and finally it was pointed out that the leaflets of many papilionaceous plants, and the leaves of numerous grasses, temporarily take up a position by sinking, rising, and folding together, in which not the broad side, but the narrow edge, is exposed to the vertical rays of the mid-day sun. A leaf-surface which assumes one of these positions with regard to the sun will transpire much less than a foliage-leaf on whose broad surface the mid-day sun falls vertically, or almost vertically; but by such a position the leaf is also afforded a protection against the too vivid light of noon. The rays which reach a vertical leaf-surface at morning and evening are not so intense as to be able to destroy chlorophyll; they have rather just that intensity which the chlorophyll- granules require for their activity. Therefore, by this arrangement the function of the chlorophyll-granules is not restricted, but is actually assisted, and in this sense the vertical direction of the green surfaces is to be looked upon also as an arrangement for regulating the activity of the chlorophyll-granules. It is evident after this explanation that herbs with vertically-directed leaf- CHLOROPHYLL AND LIGHT INTENSITY. 395 surfaces are never to be met with in shady places. On the floor of a thick wood grow no irises and no compass-plants; these are at home on the ridges of rocky mountains, and on treeless prairies, and if it happens that a seed of such a plant falls into the shade of a wood and germinates there, developing foliage-leaves, then the leaf-surfaces do not assume a vertical position, and twist and bend themselves until their broad surface is turned towards the scantily-penetrating diffuse light. If the light falls from above through the interstices of the leafy covering, the leaf-surface becomes horizontal and parallel to the ground; if the crests of the trees close together to form a thick, opaque canopy, and the diffuse light penetrates from the side between the trunks of the trees, the leaf-laminze bend and turn to the openings of the wood, giving the impression that they are looking out longingly to the sunny country which borders the dense, deep-shaded forest. The same thing is seen under every small shady bush, and, generally speaking, in all places where dissimilar tall plants overlap one another, and where the leaves of the lower are arched over by those of the higher plants. If they belong to different species, they cannot be said to have any consideration for one another. Each looks out only for itself, and the lofty species do not trouble themselves about the inferior stuff which arises from the soil under their leaves. If in the depths below there are plants which find all they require in the diffuse light and the green rays passing through the leafy roof, very well; if not, these lower plants must perish in the shade. But it is otherwise if the leaves overlapping each other belong to one and the same branch, to one and the same plant; where they must co-operate for the weal of the whole plant, and the whole can only maintain itself in the struggle for existence by harmonious division of labour. Therefore care must be taken that no leaf shall take too much light away from another; that one shall protect and support the other; that neighbours shall not jostle if one or the other has to bend, turn, and extend itself in order to best adapt itself to the incident light. ‘And this foresight actually occurs. It is exhibited, first of all, in the position of the leaves on the stem, or in other words, in the regulation of the intervals between the places of origin of neighbouring leaves; secondly, by the fact that the stalks of the green leaf-blades have the capacity of rising and sinking, twisting and bending, and also of elongating if required; and thirdly, through the form which the leaf-surfaces possess. , 396 DISTRIBUTION OF THE GREEN LEAVES ON THE STEM. 2. THE GREEN LEAVES. Distribution of the green leaves on the stem.—Relation between position and form of green leaves. —Arrangements for retaining the position taken up.—Protective arrangements of green leaves against the attacks of animals. DISTRIBUTION OF THE GREEN LEAVES ON THE STEM. Landscape painters tell us how difficult it is to treat foliage correctly, and at the same time artistically; how hard, for instance, so to reproduce the leafy crown of maples, beeches, elms, limes, and oaks that they shall immediately be recognized for that which they are intended to represent, and at the same time that that effect and tone shall be produced which is aimed at in the picture. The variety of the foliage is caused not least by the distribution of the green leaves on the branches, .and by the branching dependent upon this; things as definite as possible for each species of tree, and, generally speaking, for every plant. On cutting various leafy branches and observing the distribution of the leaves on them, the following differences first strike the eye. In numerous plants it is seen that two or more leaves originate at the same height on a branch, while in many other plants, at a particular level of the stem or branch, only a single leaf is produced. In order to be able to understand these circumstances, it is advisable to imagine the leaf-bearing shoot or stem as a cone. The apex of the cone corresponds to the upper end, and the base of the cone to the lower portion, #.e. to the oldest part of the shoot. The whole shoot is not at any time in a completed” state; it continues to grow at the apex, and at the upper part is not only younger, but is also less bulky than the older portions lying nearer to the base. It can, therefore, indeed be quite well compared to a cone, although this form is only seldom so noticeably to be met with as in the following diagrammatic figures. That which applies to the age of the various portions of the shoot naturally applies also to the leaves projecting from the shoot. That is to say, the lower leaves of the shoot are the older, the upper leaves are the younger. On looking at the top of the cone (see fig. 98), the places of insertion of the older leaves appear to arise, first of all, from the circular disc which forms the base of the cone, while the younger leaves originate close to the apex, therefore close to the centre. The stem is to a certain extent divided up by the leaves into sections one above another. Usually it is somewhat thickened or knotted at those places where the leaves project from it, and therefore the places of origin of the leaves are designated as nodes. Each portion of the stem lying between two successive nodes is called an internode. When two leaves project at the same height from the stem, they are inserted opposite one another, not unlike the two extended arms of a human body, and they appear on the cone-shaped stem (whose cross section at all heights forms a circle) at a distance from one another of exactly half the circumference of the circle (180°), (fig. 981). If three leaves spring together from the stem, DISTRIBUTION OF THE GREEN LEAVES ON THE STEM. 397 as, for example, in the Oleander, these are separated from one another in a horizontal direction by one-third of the circumference of the circle (120°). Several leaves springing from the same height form together a whorl, and the distance of the individual members of a whorl from one another is called the horizontal distance, or the divergence. The divergence amounts to 3 in fig. 981, and } in fig. 98°, of the circumference of the circle, and can be thus shortly expressed by means of these fractions. It is very remarkable that the whorls which follow after and above one another according to their age on one and the same shoot do not originate at corresponding places of the circumference, but are displaced regularly with regard to one another. Thus the point of origin of the second two-membered whorl in Fig. 98.—Plan of Whorled Phyllotaxis. 1Two-membered Whorl. *% Three-membered Whorl. fig. 98* is shifted through a quarter of the circumference (2.¢. through 90°, a right angle) from the point of origin of the first, oldest, and lowest two-membered whorl. The third whorl is again shifted through a right angle with regard to the second, and so it continues up the stem as far, generally speaking, as foliage-leaves are to be found on it. If the stem is elongated in the case described, four rectilineal lines (orthostichies) appear to be developed on it (fig. 981). If a whorl is composed of three leaves, and if the successive whorls be displaced through one-sixth of the circumference, as, for example, in the Oleander (see fig. 987), six rectilineal series of leaves or orthostichies originate, running parallel to one another down the stem. The leafy stem can also be imagined as divided into stories, each of which aisplays the same number, position, and distribution of the leaves, and agrees completely in the plan of its construction with the adjoining story. In one such case (fig. 981), each story possesses four leaves in the form of a cross; in another case (fig. 98”), it possesses two sets of three leaves separated from one another by a distance of 60°. If the stories standing above one another are separated, they would be so alike in arrangement as to be easily mistaken for one another. Each 398 DISTRIBUTION OF THE GREEN LEAVES ON THE STEM. originates below and ends above exactly like the one over and the one under it, and the only difference rests in the fact that the sections closer to the summit of the branch have smaller diameters, and often also a somewhat different outline of their members. The plan of construction is, however, as stated, exactly the same in the successive stories. In those instances where each story consists of two whorls of leaves, which are displaced with regard to one another through a certain angle, especially in the very common case where the whorl is two-membered, 7.¢. where the leaves are opposite one another in pairs, and where the successive pairs of leaves are alternately displaced through a right angle from one another, appearing thus like a cross, the leaves are said to be decussate. This arrangement is seen especially in maples and ashes, in lilac and olive-trees, in elder and honeysuckle, in labiates, gentians, Apocynaces, and numerous other families of plants. Still more common than this arrangement of the leaves is that which has been called the spiral. Here at one and the same height only a single leaf originates from the stem, and therefore all the leaves of a stem are not only shifted with respect to one another in a horizontal, but also in a vertical direction. If one imagines the nodes of a stem with decussate leaves to be so arranged longitudinally that the leaves are inserted no longer at the same heights, but at definite intervals above one another, then from the decussating, 7.c. whorled, arrangement a spiral is produced. In many willows (¢.. Salix purpurea), and very regularly also in some buckthorns (e.g. Rhamnus cathartica), in the speedwells (e.g. Veronica spicata and longifolia), and also in many composites leaves arranged partly in whorls and partly in spirals occur on the same axis, and doubtless the one merges into the other, but for the sake of clearness it is better to keep them distinct, and to draw a line between them, even though it be an imaginary one. It may be observed that stems with spirally-arranged leaves are constructed exactly like those which bear leaf-whorls, and that they consist of many stories each displaying a similar plan of construction, so that the number, position, and distribution of the leaves is repeated in each story, and as a matter of fact the followin;; plans of construction are actually to be found very frequently. Furst case. In each story only two leaves arise from the circumference of the stem. These two leaves are displaced with regard to one another in a horizontal as well as vertical direction, and their horizontal divergence amounts to half the circumference of the circle (180°) as shown in the plan in fig. 991. If a continuous line be drawn from the point of insertion of each lower older leaf to the younger one next above it on the surface of the stem, this will display the form of a spiral. It has been called the genetic spiral. In the first case here discussed it forms in each story only a single spiral band. This arrangement is repeated in the second, third, and perhaps in many other stories which follow successively on the same axis. In this way the lower leaf of the second, third, or fourth story always lies exactly above the lower leaf of the first story. The same applies to the upper leaves of all the stories. Thus two rectilineal lines or orthostichies are formed on DISTRIBUTION OF THE GREEN LEAVES ON THE STEM 399 the circumference of the stem by the leaves situated vertically above one another. The two lines are opposite, or, what comes to the same thing, they are separated from one another by half the circumference of the stem. This arrangement of the leaves, which may be observed, for example, on the branches of elms (Ulmus) and limes (T%lia), is called the one-half phyllotaxis. Second case. Three leaves are developed in one story, each at a definite height, an under, a middle, and an upper leaf. In a horizontal direction two of the leaves following one another in age are always shifted from one another through a third part of the circumference (see fig. 997). If the point of insertion of the lower leaf is connected with that of the middle leaf, and this again with that of the upper leaf by a line, and this line is continued to the beginning of the next story, a single spiral is thus formed surrounding the stem. Now above the story just described, which we will call the lowest, a second follows, which is again provided with three leaves arranged in exactly the same way. The lower leaf of the second story is situated vertically above the lower leaf of the first story, the middle above the middle, and the upper above the upper leaf, and the same arrangement is continued through all the stories. In this manner three rectilineal lines, or orthostichies, arise on the circumference of the stem from the leaves situated above one another, and each of the lines is separated from the other two by 4 of the circumference. This arrangement, which is to be found on the upright branches of alders, hazels, and beeches, is called the one-third phyllotaxis. Third case. Five leaves originate in each story, which are designated according to age as the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, the lowest being the oldest, the highest the youngest. These five leaves give place to one another in a horizontal direction, and the shifting, i.¢. the horizontal distance between two leaves next in age, amounts to 2 of the circumference of the circle (see the plan, fig. 99°). If the five leaves are joined together in succession according to their age, a spiral line is obtained consisting of two revolutions, and the “ genetic spiral” consequently forms two circuits round the stem. If a stem, whose leaves are arranged in this manner, is built up of two or several stories, then the similarly numbered leaves are situated in straight lines above one another, the first (lowest) leaves of all the stories form together one straight line (orthostichy); in the same way the second, the third, &. Thus five lines are developed on the circumference of the stem by the leaves situated one above the other, and each line is separated from another by 1 of the circumference. This arrangement, which is found in oaks, round-leaved willows, and in many buckthorns, is designated the two-fifths phyllotaxis. Fourth case. Hight leaves are to be found in each story, which may again be numbered from one to eight according to their age. Any two successive leaves are separated from one another horizontally by ~ of the circumference (see fig. 99 *). If a line be drawn starting from the first and lowest leaf, joining all the eight leaves of the story in the order of their ages, this forms a spiral line, or “ genetic spiral”, which traverses the stem three times. In a stem consisting of several such stories, the leaves named by the same numbers are placed in straight lines above one 400 DISTRIBUTION OF THE GREEN LEAVES ON THE STEM. another, and accordingly eight rectilineal lines (orthostichies) run down the stem. Each line is separated from its neighbour by } of the circumference. This arrange- ment, which occurs in roses, raspberries, pears, and poplars, if laburnuns, and in the barberry, is called the three-eighths phyllotaxis. Yet a fifth case is very often to be found in trees and bushes with narrow leaves, viz. in the Almond-tree, in the Goat’s-thorn, in the Sweet Willow, in the Sea Buckthorn, and many Spirea bushes. Each story contains thirteen leaves. \ 1 ‘ ‘ ' ' ' 1 V 1 1 j Fig. 99.—Plan for Spiral Phyllotaxis. 1 One-half Phyllotaxis. 2 One-third Phyllotaxis, 8 Two-fifths Phyllotaxis. 4 Three-eighths Phyllotaxis. The conical stem horizontally projected; the points of insertion of the leaves on the circumference of the stem marked by a dot. which may be connected by a spiral line, 4.¢. a “genetic spiral”, with five revolu- tions. The number of the straight lines here amounts to thirteen, and the distance between two leaves following one another in age is 3%; of the circumference, 4.¢. 138° (see fig. 100). Not so common, or rather not demonstrable with the same precision, are instances in which one story shows twenty-one leaves which are connected by a genetic spiral with eight revolutions; and where a story includes thirty-four leaves which are connected by a genetic spiral with thirteen revolutions. In the one case any two leaves next one another in age in a story are separated from one . 9) me i ss eae ae aes See = aoe rears a baa val ae EY fe Mi a At a ee tai H PM ch RA Me Lith ibatinia hk in Wd bi [eee bineaie hs eves Pnhedg) MILI ay aia atcant Hapa by Heine Mi att ahd 4 ae Cun ier ua a ue fl i wt set aoe a nen oe ms mia 3 Fees rior hy mee a ean te Sh ‘ 14) feet Hash sees beets] phe Hy dBavave a) iybaneted nies he hem seni an : Bess Perea Ren tvet ae ‘Ah ae NS ph ae E i he dit a wit i “a. bat feey a, ates Pi aa z og ar ri peer Aan i t: . F mt fis vars 4 spas ve iribimiti alah ine pean rey sae Mania mac ly. t rs Here ried on Arai ; iy sri eae bays ! Hl Tate Ta Linkin by st wu a eit a th ae ‘ide aha is SANS ay Ae miata she ae Rais inst PUFA } uF rt tH a ih aN \ Ws NN AAiu EHNA ON HEN) - ai a Pye nH Nas iy SY an set a ae " a i ‘ \ — Ni ty SAN NiNt ae ae ia \ Nr a ee a A t me shhh inv ANIA * ms Wry uly nd SANA ‘ . “iy RUSS oe zits — int ath Ue bat te nae a sae \ . _ f iat na i ih of is t iy Ph pur