THE OVULE. 309 



tervention of a stigma, are naked and exposed, except as they 

 are more or less covered in Pines, Firs, &c., by the imbrication of 

 the carpellary scales into a sort of ament or cone (as in Fig. 176, 

 &c.), and are fertilized by the direct application of the pollen. 

 Their seeds, accordingly, are destitute of a pod, or any similar in- 

 closure. On this account they have received the name of GYM- 

 NOSPERMOUS PLANTS (111) ; literally, plants with naked seeds. 



SECT. VIII. THE OVULE. 



561. Ovules, the rudiments of future seeds (420), at first ap- 

 pear like minute pulpy excrescences of the placenta ; but long 

 before the flower expands they have acquired a regular, and gen- 

 erally round or oval form. They are attached to the placenta by 

 one extremity, either directly, or by a short stalk called the Fu- 

 niculus, or Podosperm (Fig. 413, 414). As to number, they vary 

 from one in each ovary, or in each cell of the compound ovary, to 

 several or many upon each placenta. In the former case, they are 

 said to be solitary ; in the latter, they are definite when their num- 

 ber is uniform and not remarkably great, and indefinite, when 

 they are too numerous to be readily counted. 



562. As to situation and direction with respect to the cavity that 

 contains them, ovules are said to be erect when they arise from 

 the very bottom of the ovary ; ascending, when fixed to the pla- 

 centa above the base and directed obliquely upwards ; horizontal, 

 when they project from the side of the cell, without turning either 

 upwards or downwards (Fig. 263) ; pendulous, when their direc- 

 tion is downwards ; and suspended, when they arise from the sum- 



tion of the placenta from a process of the axis is out of the question. This 

 hypothesis is, therefore, entirely untenable as a general theory ; and whether 

 it affords a correct explanation of any form of central or basilar placentation 

 must be left for further observation to determine. We will only remark, that 

 even the appearance of a placenta or ovuliferous body in the apparent axil of 

 a carpellary leaf no more proves that the body in question belongs to the axis, 

 than that the appendage before the petals of Parnassia and the American 

 Linden, or the stamen of a Rhamnus or Vitis, represents the axis of a branch 

 instead of a leaf. As to the terminal naked ovule of the Yew, where the 

 structure, on any view, is reduced to the greatest possible simplicity, it is 

 surely as probable that it answers to the earliest formed, or foliar, portion of 

 the last phyton, here alone developed, as to the cauline part, which is so com- 

 monly suppressed in the flower. 



