52 Remarks on the Natural order Cycadea. 
In the Ferns and other flowerless plants, we find the reproductive 
organs either obscure or imperfect; and in the next succeeding step, 
(the Conifere and Cycadee,) those organs, though distinctly char- 
acterized, are still formed in the most simple manner and accompa- 
nied with a corresponding simplicity in the structure of the wood, 
the leaves, and the whole vegetable system. As also we perceive 
the remains of the carnivorous and lacustrine mammalia succeeding 
in a later formation to those of the more primitive animals, so we find 
the Palms, some of the Liliacew, and many dicotyledonous plants, 
gradually assuming their respective places, just as the improving 
condition of the globe became more fitted to their respective organ- 
izations. In this way the Aistory of the earth is unfolded to us; and 
such are the proofs perpetuated and unchanged through centuries of 
time, which show that it is through successive ages, and by a slow 
and gradual series of changes that “ihe globe has acquired its present 
more perfect state; and that both departments of organized matter 
have advanced with equal steps and mutually dependent relations'to 
that condition (perhaps still progressive,) in which they are found 
at the present moment. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 
Pl. I, Cycas revoluta, with the crown of contracted leaves in the centre bearing 
the nearly mature seeds. 
ay 
Fig. 1, the contracted leaf or imperfect ovarium, with the full grown 
ovules upon the margin of its lower half. Fig. 2, the young ovulum or female 
flow i 
nucleus. Fig.3, the full grown seed: e, onter integument ofa soft texture: d, in- 
ner integument, hard and bony. a, tercine, or third coat enveloping the nucleus 
ee This ) perhaps renders it sul more S pocighlitcei : se slots the ovula 
, Asis tle when impreg 
nated, there has of course been no embryo produced in ‘the ink: which has the 
usual homogeneous ol Atari 4 with a trifling cavity in many of the matured spe- 
cimens, where the embryo should have been found. It presents therefore a strong 
point-of interest, in the fact that the coats of the seeds being here quite perfect 
and distinguishable, are of course proved, contrary to the opinion of some ear- 
eerie, not to be the product of fecundation. In Pl. I, Fig. 4, the embryo ais 
as figured by Richard and others. 
drawings i in both plates were Sea from a noble specimen in the exotic 
nof J. W. Knevels, Esq., Newburgh, N. Y., which also contains several © 
of Cycadee. hte bins, probably about thirty years old, 
season for the second time. The trunk is about four feet in — 
height, hooneene about eight feet in n diameter, and the taft of samaiaaiie 
ed leaves in the center vighioen inches in in diameter, 
