BENNETTITES 255 



1901 he found these associated in the same specimen 

 with the previously known gynaecium, so that we were 

 presented with a Cycad-Uke plant bearing a herma- 

 phrodite flower ! The stamens were twenty or more 

 in number, arranged in a singie whorl arising from the 

 base of the seminal cone, their bases being coherent into 

 a cup. Each stamen was a pinnate leaf bearing two 

 rows of synangia on each pinna, and the whole flower was 

 enclosed in several series of hairy perianth segments. 

 It is only natural that this remarkable flower should be 

 interpreted in different ways by different authorities. 

 All are agreed that the pinnate microsporopliylls corre- 

 spond to stamens, but some, e.g. Lignier, consider the 

 interseminal scales as modified leaves, and each stalked 

 seed as a megasporophyll derived from a bud with only 

 one leaf, arising in the axil of the interseminal scale. 

 Others, however, think that all the organs springing from 

 the thalamus are foliar, and that the entire structure 

 corresponds to one strobilus or flower. This latter view, 

 which certainly seems the most reasonable, is held by 

 Wieland, Scott, and by Arber and Parkin. Indeed the 

 last -mentioned authors in a paper on The Origin of the 

 Angiosperms, published in 1907, term the flower of 

 Bennettites a " proanthostrobilus," leading up to a 

 hypothetical anthostrobilus and the modern flower, such 

 as we meet with in the Magnoliaceae. 



As to the general relationships of these primitive 

 *' flower-bearing " Cycads with the modern Angiosperms 

 I cannot do better than quote to you Scott's summary 

 as given in the concluding chapter of his valuable Studies 

 in Fossil Botany. 



" Taking the whole of the characters into consideration, 

 the evidence of affinity between the Mesozoic Cycadophyta 

 and the Angiosperms appears very strong. It cannot, of 

 course, be supposed that the Bennettiteae were on the 

 direct line of Angiospermous descent, for there are 

 manifest points of difference, notably in the great com- 



