JEFFREY. ARAUCARIOXYLON TYPE. r)()0 



the ancestors of tlie coniferous stock, namely tlie ( 'ordaitales. 'leaking 

 first the very important criterion from the stan(l{)()int of the systema- 

 tic arrangement of the Coniferales, the organization of the female 

 cone, we find Httle to justify tlie recent contention of Professor Seward 

 and his students and of Mr. Thomson, that the ovulate cone of the 

 Araucarian conifers is of a different morphological order from that 

 characteristic of the remaining coniferous tribes. It is perfectly 

 dear that not only in the more primitive species of the living genus 

 Araucaria but also in the cones of the Mesozoic representatives of the 

 Araucariineae, described by the present writer either independently 

 or in collaboration with Dr. Arthur Hollick, that the Araucarian female 

 cone, like that of the other tril)es of conifers was originally composed 

 of cone-scales with a double system of bundles, independently ema- 

 nating from the cone axis and of inverse orientation. Consequently 

 whatever e.xplanation is adopted for the double system of bundles in 

 one case must l)e adopted in all. Attempts to read the Araucariineae 

 out of the conifers nnist continue so long as the view is adhered to that 

 they represented the primitive elaboration of the coniferous stock. It 

 is a noteworthy fact that Professors Penhallow and Seward as well as 

 Mr. Thomson, who much as they disagree in other matters are in 

 harmony in regarding the Araucariineae as distinct from other conif- 

 erous tribes anfl at the same time as the primitive representatives 

 of the stock. The recent investgations of Mr. A. T. Eames ^^ appear 

 to make it perfectly clear that whatever explanation is adopted of the 

 organization of the female strobilus in the Araucariineae, must hold 

 likewise for all the remaining tribes of Conifers. 



If we turn our attention now to the gametophytes, we arrive at 

 similar conclusions, if our logical processes are based on the established 

 principles of biological science. Taking first the male gametophyte, 

 we find a method of germination of the microspore unlike that found 

 in any other gymnospermous group, which has been inaptly flenomi- 

 nated by Mr. Thomson as 'protosiphonogamic' Certainly we would 

 not expect to find the primitive type of pollen tube formation in a 

 group in which the pollen no longer reaches the apex of the ovule, 

 as it characteristically does in all other known groups of Gymno- 

 sperms, living and extinct. The peculiar germination of the pollen 

 of Agathis and Araucaria, on the cone scale and not on the apex of 

 the young seed is an unmistakable stigma of aberration. The con- 

 tents of the pollen tube likewise vouch for the highly specialized con- 

 si Ann. Bot. Ined. 



