Strong drink and tobacco smoke : the structure, growth, and uses of malt, hops, yeast, and tobacco / by Henry P. Prescott.

  • Prescott, Henry Paul, active 1868.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Strong drink and tobacco smoke : the structure, growth, and uses of malt, hops, yeast, and tobacco / by Henry P. Prescott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    Plate 3, fig. 17, represents a young barley plant about six inches high. A slight swelling will be observed at one part of it, g. When cut open vertically its whole length (fig. 18), the stem is found to be perfectly hollow, except- ing at certain points of it, where (as at a, b) diaphragms, or solid plates of cellular tissue, extend across it. Just above the upper one of these plates is a small, conical semi-transparent body, g. Fig. 19 is a highly-magni- fied representation of this part, which in reality is, at this time, no bigger than the head of a pin. Observe that all but the two inner leaves of the stem have been removed to show it more clearly. This minute body consists of two parts, and from it grow, by con- stant addition of new tissues, the inflorescence or flower axis, a (fig. 19), and b, the leaf axis or stem, the entire mass forming the terminal bud of the plant of which a and b are the flower and stem portions in a rudimentary state. The mode of growth may be thus explained. Whilst the base of the terminal bud rested as it were on the diaphragm d, a leaf-bud was formed, and, on expanding into a leaf, the tissues from which it grew on the] stem also increased and lengthened by the constantly renewed vitality imparted to them by the respiration of the leaf. By the time the stem has grown the length of the inter- node (fig. 18, a to b), the terminal bud has also increased in diameter, another leaf-bud is forming, and the plant repeats the process of horizontal and vertical growth. At each point, where a new leaf-bud, and consequently