
50 : DEVELOPMENT OF THE FLOWER 
Its structure is at this time obviously as I have represent- 
ed it. The membrane is uniform throughout, except at the 
neck where it appears to be thickest, along the inner edge 
there is an apparent thickening ; but this depends on the sac 
being more pressed together at that point; it disappears on 
spreading the sac out flat. 
The mass is of a corneo-waxy consistence; water after 
sometime causes the cellular part to become minutely granular, 
the opacity commencing nearest the future line of dehis- 
cence: iodine acts slowly upon the contents of the grains, 
and never produces any vivid tint; oil renders them quite 
transparent at first, then like water develops a granularity. 
he grains of themselves in water appear as a hyaline cell, 
of irregular, often angular shape, with a nucleus of opaque 
granular matter in which occur bubbles. 
I have not been able to ascertain the presence of any 
tegument to the ovule, at any period throughout; it has ap- 
peared to me to be a homogeneous cellular body, for some- 
time it is a mere protuberance from the placenta: its point 
of attachment then becomes narrowed, and the upper face 
flattened ; this flattening is the commencement of the groove. 
The groove exists at a comparatively early period ; its fundus 
has the same structure apparently as the rest of the surface 
of the ovulum. 
Still the edge of the ovulum looks too cellular, and not 
sufficiently lax for a nucleus, which appears in manifest mo- 
dification of the usual form of foramen, and has no anology 
among really nucleary ovula, and the existence of-the groove 
induces me to think that the usual appearances of ovule at 
particularly early periods of growth has escaped me, and that 
it consists of a tegument and nucleus intimately adherent ; 
particularly as in Congea, in the later ovulum of which no 
difference of structure exists; I have seen indications of the 
annulus, the first step in the process of the formation of the 
tegument 
[At this period of development the stigma is very large in 
comparison with pistillum which is obscure; the channel is 
even now closed up, it is a grumous cellular mass, pentangu- 

