466 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [DECEMBER 
deposition of the pollen there is a very interesting condition. Sometimes 
the pollen falls in the micropyle, and sometimes in the cavity around the 
ovule, whence it grows over the tissues into the micropyle. This recalls 
the condition of affairs in the Araucarieae, and is essentially similar in 
this respect to Agathis, as I have found it. 
In the pollen of Microcachrys there is a similar excess of prothallial 
tissue. The grain has wings, however, but not of so definite a character 
as those of Dacrydium and Podocarpus, which, as is commonly known, 
bear two well-developed floating appendages. In Microcachrys a large 
percentage of the grains have three rather poorly developed wings, though 
the greater number are of the type which is characteristic of the higher 
members of the group. The winging of the grain is, as it were, in its 
experimental condition in Microcachrys, and the form is to be considered 
in this respect as a transitional one between Saxegothaea on the one hand 
and Dacrydium and Podocarpus on the other. ; 
Attention has often been directed to the biwinged condition of the 
pollen of the pines and podocarps as an indication of the probable affinity 
of the two groups. This view is no longer tenable, since the wings of the 
pollen in the latter are a development within the group itself, analogous but 
not homologous with those of the pine series. On the contrary, the rela- 
tionship of the microgametophytic condition in the Podocarpeae to that in 
the Araucarieae is increasingly apparent—RoBERT Boyp THompson, Unt- 
versity of Toronto. 
