YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 25 



The early botanists who strove to prove that 

 Fenis were, so to speak, the last development 

 before the Flowering Plants were not, perhaps, 

 very far from the truth. It has been seen that 

 during the period when the coal deposits were 

 being formed there flourished side by side races 

 of true Ferns and Fern-like plants which bore 

 seeds the Pteridosperms. The point has also 

 been suggested that in all probability these two 

 groups of plants had a common origin. With 

 the coming of later times (the Cretaceous and 

 Jurassic periods) there appeared the Bennetti- 

 teae. These remarkable plants seem to have 

 entirely taken the place of the Pteridosperms, 

 and were an enormous advance towards the 

 Flowering Plants of the present day. Only 

 recently have the Bennettiteae been properly 

 described and their interesting features fully 

 understood. We have a few representative's 

 of this important group in the Cycads, plants 

 bearing a superficial resemblance to Palms, but 

 actually very different in all other ways. By 

 the manner in which the reproductive organs 

 are produced, and the way in which the scheme 

 is carried out, these Bennettiteae appear to be 

 a half-way house between the cryptogams and 

 the advanced flowering plants. The stamens 

 bearing the pollen are produced on the fronds 

 very much like the sporangia of Ferns. On the 

 other hand, the seed-bearing structures are 

 collected together into a sort of pistil. This was 

 borne at the tip of the branches and ended their 

 growth, just as happens in the case of Flowering 

 Plants. For some reason which we cannot 

 understand these Bennettiteae seem to have 

 fallen back in the race for supremacy, for the 

 group is but poorly represented in our modern 

 Cycads and a few allied plants. In all the world 



