Remarks on the Natural order Cycadea. 47 
the female flowers in Cycadex and Conifere.”* The elder Richard, 
in his admirable “ Mémoire sur les Coniféres et les Cycadées,” pre- 
pared about the same time, and published afterwards by his son, had 
indeed, with great ingenuity, established the affinity between Cyca- 
dex and Conifere ; but his views respecting the female flower and 
seed of both these tribes differ widely from those of Brown, and are 
now generally admitted by the first botanists to be erroneous. The 
female flower of these orders consists, according to Richard, of a 
monosepalous perianth or calyx, enveloping or adhering to an uni- 
locular ovariam, which contains the true seed. He considers the 
aperture at the apex of the outer coat to be the style, and the pro- 
jecting point of the second, the stigma. Brown, on the contrary, 
suggested that the calyx, &c. of Richard, are but the membranes 
of the ovula, and in the mature state the integuments of the seed; 
in short, that the bodies called by Richard and other writers the fe- 
male flowers, are naked ovula, borne upon the margins of a con- 
tracted leaf, which last may be considered as an imperfect and open 
ovarium. ‘The impregnation he supposed to take place through the 
foramen of the ovulum, (the perforated stigma of Richard,) there be- 
ing (contrary to the usual structure in phenogamous plants) no style 
or stigma through which the pollen can find its way to that body. 
These ideas, so startling and paradoxical at first sight, were slowly 
received even by the most acute botanists, but have finally been al- 
most universally adopted. The so-called naked seeds of Linneus 
having been demonstrated to be one-seeded fruits, it appears that the 
Cycadez and Conifer alone have the peculiarity of producing truly 
naked seeds, and that they compose therefore a distinct natural group, 
to which the name of Gymnosperme has very appropriately been 
ven. 
Aside from an examination of the ovula themselves, and their in- 
teguments, the botanist who studies the structure of the organs of 
reproduction in Cycadew, cannot but be convinced, that what were 
formerly called pistillate flowers are simply ovula in the first place, 
and afterwards naked seeds. ‘The modified leaf, bearing the ovula 
upon its face or margin, is undoubtedly a carpellum in an imperfect 
state of development, the seeds of which would be enclosed in an 
ovarium, if the edges of that carpellary leaf were folded together in 
the usual manner. In Cycas circinalis, the ordinary appearance of 
the pinnated leaf is so far departed from as to exhibit in fact a flat 
* Vide Appendix to Capt. King’s Voyage, p. 22. 
