a. [SUB- 1 a.]
1. Lying, situated or formed under the bark of a tree; (of insects) living or feeding under bark.
1815. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1818), I. 212. A numerous army of wood-lice, earwigs, spiders, field-bugs, and similar subcortical insects take their station there.
1832. Lindley, Introd. Bot., 213. To facilitate the descent of the subcortical fibres of the growing buds.
1851. Mantell, Petrifactions, i. 43. These are not produced by the attachment of petioles, but are sub-cortical protuberances.
1866. Rye, Brit. Beetles, 89. Omalium planum … is, perhaps, as good a type of a subcortical insect as could be seen.
2. Situated under or pertaining to the region underlying (a) the cortex of a sponge, (b) the cortex of the brain.
1887. Encycl. Brit., XXII. 415. The roots of the incurrent sinuses form widely open spaces immediately beneath the cortex and are the rudiments of subcortical crypts.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VI. 810. Supra-nuclear paralysis (including the cortical and subcortical varieties). Ibid., VII. 422. The lesion was an essentially subcortical one.
Hence Subcortically adv., with reference to the region underlying the cortex.
1871. W. A. Leighton, Lichen-flora, 150. The sub-cortically albo-maculate thallus.
