The Contexture of this _Cortical Body_ may be well illustrated by that of a _Sponge_, being a Body Porous, Dilative, and Pliable. Its Pores, as they are innumerable, so extream small. These Pores are not only susceptive of so much Moisture as to fill, but also to enlarge themselves, and so to dilate the _Cortical Body_ wherein they are; which by the shriv’ling in thereof, by being expos’d to the Air, is also seen. In which dilatation many of its Parts becoming more lax and distant, and none of them suffering a solution of their continuity; ’tis a Body also sufficiently pliable; or, a most exquisitely fine-wrought Sponge. The Extention of these Pores is much alike both by their length and breadth of the Root; which from the shrinking up of the _Cortical Body_, in a piece of a cut Root, by the same dimensions, is argu’d. The proportions of this _Cortical Body_ are various: If thin, ’tis called a _Barque_; & thought to serve to no other end, than what is usually ascrib’d to it as a _Barque_; which is a narrow conceit: If a Bulky Body in comparison with that within it, as in the young Roots of _Cychory_, _Asparagus_, &c. ’tis here, because the fairest, therefore taken for the prime Part; which, though, as to Medicinal use, it is; yet, as to the private use of the Plant, not so. The Colour hereof, though it be originally white, yet in the continued growth of the Root, divers Tinctures, as yellow in _Dock_, red in _Bistort_, are thereinto introduced. Next within this Part stands the _Lignous Body_; the Original whereof, as of the two former, is from the Seed; or, the _Seminal Roots_ of both the Lobes, being united in the _Radicle_, and with its _Parenchyma_ co-extended, is here in the Root the _Lignous Body_.