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DB. M. T. MASTERS ON THE MORPHOLOGY, 





General Eeview of the Nature of the Female Flower. 





The comparative examination of the female flower uuder 

 various aspects — morphological, teratological, developmental, and 

 structural — that has now been attempted, though naturally incom- 

 plete, and possibly incorrect in some of its details, permits of a 

 general review being made. In all cases the ovule is the essential 

 part of the flower. This is subtended in all cases by a bract, 

 and is generally borne upon a " fruit-scale." The bract may be a 

 mere scale or it may be leaf-like or woody or succulent, but it 

 has invariably the relative position, disposition, and essential 

 anatomical characters of a leaf. This is admitted by all botanists. 

 The discrepancies and variations of opinion which have given 

 rise to such a voluminous mass of literature concern what is 

 here called the fruit-scale. As this has been throughout referred 

 to incidentally, it is not necessary in this place to occupy space 

 with a detailed account of the views held by each observer, the 

 facts and arguments he adduces in their support, or to increase 

 the length of this communication by citing the corresponding 

 arguments used in their refutation by other observers 



Suffice it to remark that what is here termed the fruit- 











scale, u lamina ovulifera" is almost invariably, perhaps always, 

 present in some guise or other. It is scarcely if at all visible 

 externally in the verticillate Cupressineae, hardly more so in 

 Agathis or Cunninghamia. In other Cupressinese, such as Libo- 

 cedrus, in Araucaria, Sciadopitys, and most Abietinese it forms 

 the larger and more conspicuous part of the ripe cone. In some 

 genera, as before cited, it is not apparent on the surface ; i» 

 others it exists as a thin membrane, in others as a spongy 

 substance or a thick woody mass. In some it seems to be 

 quite distinct and separate from the bract ; in others it is more 

 or less completely inseparate from it. One constant feature it 

 preseuts wherever development has gone on sufficiently for the dif- 

 ferentiation of vascular and bast tissue, and that is that the orien- 

 tation of the vascular or x) lem elements and that of the bast or 

 phloem tissue respectively is exactly the reverse of what is met 

 with in true leaves. For the rest it has been considered either 

















The history of the subject may be found in the several papers of Stras- 

 burger, Eichler, Dickson, Celako\sky, and others before referred to. 



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