: Natural Family of Plants called Coniferæ. 165 
The work of Richard already mentioned, although of great value in a sy- 
stematic point of view, threw comparatively little additional light upon the 
organization of this remarkable family of plants, from the circumstance of its 
learned author having either misunderstood or wholly overlooked many parts 
of their structure. We are indebted to Mr. Brown for having first pointed out 
the real nature of the parts of the female flower in this family. Richard, as is 
well known, adopted in a great measure the views of preceding botanists. He 
regarded the expanded pericarpia as bractes, the ovula as the flowers, the in- 
tegument as the calyx, and the apex of the nucleus as the stigma, and the fleshy 
outer integument of the ovulum of Taxus (which is developed after fecunda- 
tion) as a kind of involucrum. He moreover describes the flowers as inverted 
in Abietineæ, and erect in Cupressineæ and Taxineæ, and he considered the 
ovulum (nucleus) to follow the direction of the flowers. The two genera, which 
form the subject of this communication, belong to the Cupressineæ, a group di- 
stinguished, as 1 have before stated, by the tendency of their reproductive or- 
gans to become indefinite, by their persistent pericarpia, naked buds, and other 
peculiarities of habit. To his character of the group Richard added the form 
of the mature female spike, which is usually a galbulus, composed of peltate 
scales; but in the two genera which I am about to describe, that organ has 
assumed nearly the form of a cone, as in Pinus. The genera comprised in the 
Cupressineæ ave Cupressus, Thuja, Callitris, Taxodium, Juniperus, and the 
subjects of the present paper. The structure of the fruit of Juniperus differs 
only from Cupressus, in the peltate scales becoming confluent and fleshy as the 
fruit advances towards maturity. This will be best understood by examining 
the female spike at an early stage, when it is scarcely possible to distinguish 
between the two genera. From its fleshy fruit some have supposed that 
Juniperus was related to Taxus; but that is a mere point of analogy, for in 
Juniperus the flowers and ovula are indefinite, and the scales or pericarpia 
unite and become fleshy, while in Taxus the female spike is reduced to a 
single flower, with a solitary, completely naked ovulum, whose outer integu- 
ment becomes succulent, and altogether resembles a fleshy arillus. 
The species of this group are pretty equally distributed in both hemispheres ; 
but none of the genera are strictly confined to either, with the exception of 
Taxodium and Cryptomeria to the northern, and Athrotaxis to the southern, 
vol. XIII. 2 
