THE FRUIT AND SEED-DISPERSAL 337 



condition may be represented by an amended diagram (Fig. 258). 

 For us here the point of importance is this. That the stage at which 

 difference of sex is first recognisable in the individual life is not fixed 

 for all Flowering Plants. In hermaphrodite plants it appears only 

 in the several organs of the individual flower. In dioecious plants the 

 difference extends to the whole sporophyte plant. These observations 

 will be of value for comparison with forms lower in the scale of 

 vegetation. But such questions cannot be fully treated till these 

 organisms have been described. Nor can the origin and real nature 

 of that complex body, the seed, be properly understood till it can be 

 examined comparatively. A knowledge of the propagative methods 

 of more primitive plants must first be acquired ; and the comparisons 

 which follow from it will be taken later (Chapter XXXIV., p. 543). 



B.B. 



