48 Remarks on the Natural order Cycadee. 
scale-like carpel, with the rows of ovula upon either margin, thus 
closely resembling an ovarium formed of a single carpellum, (such 
as a follicle or legume,) spread open. In C. revoluta the leaf is in 
a less altered state, having at the extremity contracted pinnated di- 
visions, (Pl. II, fig. 1,) but the part occupied by the ovula is, as in 
C. circinalis, the margin of the leaf. If, therefore, the pistillum be 
a modified leaf or carpellum, from the edges of which are produced 
the ovula, as is now admitted by the first structural botanists, the en- 
velopes of the bodies which constitute the female organs in Cycadee 
and Conifere cannot be the calyx and ovarium, or indeed any thing 
else than the proper integuments of the seed; inasmuch as these 
bodies are produced upon the margins of the ovarium, the summit 
of which, if it were folded together, would become the style or stig- 
ma, and at the base, or surrounding which, would be found, perhaps, 
if in a state of sufficient development, the true floral envelopes. 
This argument receives additional force from the well known ten- 
dency of many leaves to produce upon their margins, either buds, (as 
in Bryophyllum and other plants,) which are in fact distinct individu- 
als, or ovula, which are capable of becoming such by impregnation. 
species of Cycas more commonly examined by European 
botanists, appears to have been C. circinalis, which, with regard to 
the seed itself, seems to be in a less perfect state of development 
than the species now before us. Richard’s admirable figures repre- 
sent only the former species; and Professor Lindley’s essential char- 
acters of the order, in his ‘‘ Introduction to the Natural System,” are 
obviously drawn, so far as relates to Cycas, from C. circinalis.* In 
the specimen of C. revoluta before us, the most important difference 
arises from the presence of a brown membranous coating of the nu- 
cleus, perfectly distinct during the latter part of the wise of the 
*In the “essential character” of Cycadex, given by Trteesce Lindley, in his 
“Introduction to the Natural System,” the “ pistilliferous flowers” are described 
as “ either collected in cones, or surrounding the central bud, in the form of con- 
acteristic of the whole order; while, so far as we hay orved, such is actually 
the case only in C. circinalis, which in the beset ptr disposition of its 
ets, and also in the whole appearance of the growing son exhibits 
in the iiiioeitidiaiae she affinity of this order to = Ferns. The vernation is 
a evoluta, nor-in our_Am an Sete ox wich ati 
no means gy 
exotic species of that genus as we er had an nceneineity to examine. 
i a 
