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Ruskin, John, 1819-1900

"Proserpina, Volume 2 Studies Of Wayside Flowers"

I never saw a maple stem of the first year so small.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
(2) The black band with white dots round the marrow, represents the
marrow-sheath.
(3) From the marrow-sheath run the marrow-rays 'dividing the vascular
circle into numerous compact segments.' A 'ray' cannot divide anything into
a segment. Only a partition, or a knife, can do that. But we shall find
presently that marrow _rays_ ought to be called marrow-_plates_, and are
really mural, forming more or less continuous partitions.
(4) The compact segments 'consist of woody vessels and of porous vessels.'
This is the first we have heard of woody _vessels_! He means the '_fibres_
ligneux' of Figuier; and represents them in each compartment, as at C (Fig.
25). without telling us why he draws the woody vessels as radiating. They
appear to radiate, indeed, when wood is sawn across, but they are really
upright.
(5) A moist layer of greenish cellular tissue called the cambium
layer--black in Figure 25--and he draws it in flat arches, without saying
why.
(6), (7), (8) Three layers of bark (called in his note Endophloeum;
Mesophloeum, and Epiphloeum!) with 'laticiferous vessels.' [43]
(9) Epidermis. The three layers of bark being separated by single lines, I
indicate the epidermis by a double one, with a rough fringe outside, and
thus we have the parts of the section clearly visible and distinct for
discussion, so far as this first figure goes,--without wanting one letter
of all his three and twenty!
17.


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