420 Mr. R. Brown on the female Flower in Cycadee 8 Conifere. 
coat, a part of secondary importance, and whose nature is dis- 
‘puted, as in the state of the nucleus of the seed, respecting 
which there is no difference of opinion; and where the plu- 
rality of embryos, or at least the existence and regular arrange- 
ment of the cells in which they are formed, is the uniform 
structure in the family. 
The second view suggested, in which the anthera in Cyca- 
dese is considered as producing on its surface an indefinite 
number of pollen masses, each enclosed in its proper mem- 
brane, would derive its only support from a few remote ana- 
logies: as from those antherze, whose loculi are sub-divided 
into a definite, or more rarely an indefinite, number of cells, 
and especially from the structure of the stamina of Viscum 
album. 
I may remark, that the opinion of M. Richard *, who con- 
siders these grains, or masses, as unilocular antherze, each of 
which constitutes a male flower, seems to be attended with 
nearly equal difficulties. 
The analogy between the male and female organs in Coni- 
ferze, the existence of an open ovarium being assumed, is at 
first sight more apparent than in Gycadex. In Coniferee, 
however, the pollen is certainly not naked, but is enclosed in 
a membrane similar to the lobe of an ordinary anthera. And 
‘in those genera in which each squama of the amentum pro- 
‘duces two marginal lobes only, as Pinus, Podocarpus, Dacry- 
‘dium, Salisburia, and Phyllocladus, it nearly resembles the 
more general -form of the antherz in other Phanogamous 
plants. But the difficulty occurs in those genera which have 
an increased number of lobes on each squama, as Agathis and 
Araucaria, where their number is considerable and apparently 
indefinite, and more particularly still in Cunninghamia, or 
Belis}+, in which the lobes, though only three in number, 
agree in this respect, as well as in insertion and direction, with 
the ovula. The supposition, that in such cases all the lobes 
of each squama are cells of one and the same anthera, receives 
“but little support either from the origin and arrangement of 
* Dict. Class. @ Hist. Nat. tom. y. p. 216. 
+ In communicating specimens of this plant to the late M. Richard, for 
his intended monograph of Coniferze, I added some remarks on its structure, 
_agreeing with those here made. I at the same time requested that, if he 
objected to Mr. Salisbury’s Belis as liable to be confounded with Bellis, the 
genus might be named Cunninghamia, to commemorate the merits of Mr. 
James Cunningham, an excellent observer in his time, by whom this plant 
.was discovered ; and in honour of Mr. Allan Cunningham, the very desery- 
ing botanist who accompanied Mr, Oxley in his first expedition into the 
interior of New South Wales, and Captain King in all his voyages of survey 
of the Coasts of New Holland. 
the 
