10 DR. M. T. MASTERS ON THE 
SaXEGOTHAA. 
This interesting Chilian genus was founded in 1852 by Lind- 
ley, who says of it, “ The genus Saxegothea forms a transition of 
a most remarkable kind, from Conifers to Taxads. Sir William 
Hooker regarded it as a Podocarp with flowers ina cone. It is 
in reality a genus with the male flowers of a Podocarp, the female 
flowers of a Dammara (Agathis), the fruit of a Juniper, the seed 
of a Dacrydiwm, and the habit of a Yew ” (‘ Vegetable Kingdom,’ 
p- 229). The foliage and habit are, indeed, those of a Yew, the 
male flowers are axillary, stalked, catkin-like; the anthers 
arranged spirally, each opening longitudinally, and destitute of a 
crest. In the original illustrations, however, such an appendage 
is distinctly represented. The pollen-cells are globose. The 
leaves on the cone-bearing branches pass gradually into spirally 
arranged, but distant scales, which, in their turn, graduate into 
thick, ovate-lanceolate, loosely and spirally imbricate bracts, 
simple externally, but each provided near the base with a cavity 
from the upper end of which hangs a single free ovule. The 
bracts ultimately become fleshy and consolidated into a more or 
less pulpy head or spike. In floral structure the genus ap- 
proaches the Araucarinea, but the habit is more like that of Taxus. 
Bertrand (in Ann. Se. Nat. sér. V. xx. 187 4, p.69) describes the 
structure of the leaf as very similar to that of Podocarpus. 
Microcacueys. 
Sir Joseph Hooker was the founder of this genus in 1845. It 
is represented by a Tasmanian shrub with small decussate leaves, 
which pass gradually at the ends of some of the branches into 
stamens. The flowers are dicecious, the males in terminal spikes ; 
anthers stipitulate, two-lobed, dehiscing transversely, and pro- 
vided with an incurved, scale-like connective. Pollen-grains 
3-cornered, or somewhat globose. Female flowers terminal; 
bracts spirally imbricate, given off at right angles to the axis, 
apparently simple, bearing an inverted ovule, and ultimately 
becoming succulent, and as it lengthens carrying the ovule with 
it, so that the latter becomes placed horizontally. A fleshy, 
tubular aril grows from below upwards over the greater part of the 
woody testa of the seed, leaving the apex exposed. Seed 3-sided. 
It differs from Podocarpus mainly in the form of the pollen- 
grains, the aggregated fruits, and the woody axis of the spike. 
From Dacrydium it differs in the aggregated female flowers and 
in the succulent bract. 
