944. ON THE SEED OF MAGNOLIA. 
ete. Endlicher seems to have adopted a nearly similar view, although 
he hesitated, as well he might, to call this covering an arillus; yet, in 
his ‘ Enchiridion,’ he denominates it an accessory integument, enclosing 
the crustaceous proper seed-coat or testa. In the Genera Am. Bor. 
lllustrata, vol. i. pp. 59 and 61, I adopted the opposite and older 
opinion, and even called the outer integument the testa of the seed, 
notwithstanding its fleshy texture, on the ground that it represented 
the exterior of the two proper coats of the ovule. In a paper read be- 
fore the Linnzean Society in November last (and reported in Ann. and 
Mag. Nat. Hist. for May, 1855), Mr. Miers has elaborately and in- 
geniously maintained this scarlet covering to be an arillus; and, after 
criticizing the grounds of my opinion, has concluded that “ there is no 
reason to doubt that in Magnolia the scarlet envelope is due to a sub- 
sequent growth over the primine." 
I should state that the view I adopted was not a mere inference 
* from the faet of having observed spiral vessels in the placentary 
attachment of the ovules ;” but I had satisfied myself by continued and 
very easy observation that the exterior of the two coats of the ovule (a 
~ vertical section of which in Magnolia glauca is accurately represented 
. by fig. 7 of plate xxii.), and to which the raphe belongs, is not co- 
vered by any subsequent growth, any arillus or accessory covering 
Whatever,— but itself forms the scarlet envelope of the seed. Mr. 
Miers’ observations have. naturally led me to examine anew the ovules 
and young seeds of M. glauca, umbrella, acuminata, costata, ete. and 
I must still maintain that this view is thus far perfectly correct, and 
abundantly easy to verify upon the living plant. Mr. Miers, however, 
is quite right in maintaining “ the existence of an inner membranaceous 
integument around the albumen and within [what he calls] the true 
testa,” the erustaceous envelope, and which I formerly overlooked, or else 
took (wrongly enough) to be derived from the embryo-sac: it is plain, 
also, that he is equally right in assuming this to represent in the seed the 
inner of the two coats of the ovule, and therefore in applying to it the 
name of tegmen. He is quite correct, moreover, in stating that ** the 
aphe proceeding from the hilum is wholly exterior to and free from 
the bony coating,”—which is a valid reason against considering this 
ony coating to be the testa, as Mr. Miers does,—but he is less so in 
further statement, that the raphe is “interior to the outer tunic.” 
cord of vessels in the ovule is involved in the middle of the mostly 
