Note 478 — PLANT-SKELETONS.

The well-known Sir John Hill, an Englishman, has proved, however, in later times, the possibility of injecting a substance into the vessels of plants also. He dissolved sugar of lead in water, suspended in it bits of the finest wood, so that one-half of them was under water and the other above it, and covered the vessel in which they were placed with an inverted glass. At the end of two days he took the bits of wood out, cut off the parts which had been immersed in the water, dipped them in a warm lye made of unslaked lime and orpiment, like what was used formerly for proving wine; and by these means the finest vessels, which had been before filled with sugar of lead, acquired a dark colour, and their apertures became much more distinct. This process he describes himself in his work on the Construction of Timber.