469 ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE FEMALE FLOWER 



that these particles are analogous to the fovilla, and tlie 

 containhig organs to the grains of pollen in antheroe of the 

 usual structure, would be entirely gratuitous. It is, at 

 the same time, deserving of remark, that were this view 

 563] adopted on more satisfactory grounds, a corresponding 

 development might then be said to exist in the essential 

 parts of the male and female organs. The increased de- 

 velopment in the ovulum would not consist so much in the 

 unusual form and thickening of the coat, a part of secon- 

 dary importance, and whose nature is disputed, as in the 

 state of the nucleus of the seed, respecting which there is 

 no difference of opinion ; and where the plurality of embryos, 

 or at least the existence and regular arrangement of the 

 cells in which they are formed, is the uniform structure in 

 the family. 



The second view suggested, in which the anthera in 

 Cycadese is considered as producing on its surface an in- 

 definite number of pollen masses, each enclosed in its proper 

 membrane, would derive its only support from a few re- 

 mote analogies ; as from those antherse, whose loculi are 

 subdivided 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 

 considers these grains, or masses, as unilocular antherse, 

 each of which constitutes a male flower, seems to be at- 

 tended with nearly equal difficulties. 



The analogy between the male and female organs in 

 Coniferse, the existence of an open ovarium being assumed, 

 is at first sight more apparent than in Cycadea^. In Coni- 

 ferse, 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 produces two marginal lobes only, as Pinus, 

 Podocarpus, Dacrydium, Salisburia, and Phyllocladus, it 

 nearly resembles the more general form of the antherae 

 564] in other Pha^nogamous plants. But the difiiculty occurs 

 in those genera which have an increased number of lobes 



* Diet. Class. (V Hist. Nat. torn, v, p. 216. 



i 



