814 REPORT— 1902. 



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16. 

 The following Papers were read : — 



1. On the Moriyhology of the Seed and Seedling of Torreya. 

 By Professor F. W. Oliver, D.Sc, and Miss Edith Chick. 



The seed of Torreya is remarkable among Gymnosperms in possessing a 

 ruminated endosperm. This character, which suggested a comparison with 

 Brongniart's seed Pachytesta of the French Permo-Carboniferous, led the authors 

 to a full investigation into the morphology of the genus. This has been possible 

 through the courtesy of the Marquess of Huntly, in whose pinetum at Orton 

 Longueville an old tree of Torreya myristica regularly produces fertile seed. To 

 his head gardener, Mr. A. Harding, the authors are indebted for a continuous 

 supply of ovules and seeds in all stages of development. 



The young ovules emerge from the bud at the end of May, and are at once 

 pollinated. The pollen-tubes are produced without delay, and by September the 

 archegonia are developed. Fertilisation is accomplished during this month, and 

 simple stratified embryos are formed before the winter. Next spring the embryos 

 continue their development, the seed grows enormously in length, and by the 

 second autumn is ripe. 



Whilst a full account of the development of the seed is postponed till a 

 future occasion reasons are given for regarding the seed as retaining many of 

 the primitive characters distinctive of palaeozoic gymnospermous seeds, and an 

 attempt is made to elucidate the structure of the seed of Torreya in terms of 

 these. 



The structure of the seedling, in which the cotyledons are hypogeal, shows 

 a near agreement with that of Ginkyo, and, with other features of Torrfiya, tends 

 to strengthen the links connecting the Ta.vacere with the Cycads and primitive 

 Gymnosperms. 



2. The Nature of the Vascular System of the Stem in Certain Dicotyledonous 

 Orders. By W. C. Worsdell. 



The object of the present thesis is to show, from anatomical data, that no hard 

 and fast line exists between the two classes of dicotyledons and monocotyledons. 

 The hollow vascular cylinder of the stem of a great number of dicotyledonous 

 orders, if not of all, has been derived from a system of scattered bundles such as 

 is characteristic of the stem of almost all monocotyledons. The flowering-stem 

 and peduncle, as being those parts of the caulome which have undergone least 

 modification owing to the necessities of adaptation to external conditions, exhibit, 

 as a rule, most clearly the primitive structure which in the vegetative parts has 

 become obscured. The axial organs of the seedling, owing to their limited 

 diameter and the small number of leaf-traces concerned in the building-up of the 

 vascular system, cannot as a rule possibly exhibit the primitive scattered arrange- 

 ment of the bundles. 



As the stem increased in height and became more woody, and the leaves 

 smaller and more numerous, the scattered arrangement of bundles in the stem 

 (chiefly a result of the latter being mainly built up of large leaf-bases from which 

 great numbers of pluriseriate bundles entered the axis) gradually became modified 

 into that of a hollow cylinder, which was necessary both to support the bending- 

 strains from a tall stem and to facilitate the continuous centrifugal addition of 

 new conducting-tissues by means of a secondary meristem. The stems of plants 

 possessing scattered bundles support bending-strains by means of a sub-peripheral 

 sclerotic band, and, in those cases where a secondary meristem is present, increase 

 their conducting tissue by the continuous centrifugal formation of new scattered 

 bundles accompanied by interfascicular tissue. 



As far as the investigation has gone, the primitive scattered arrangement of 



