MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ON CONIFER. 385 
odinec), and that Braun has confirmed this by the study of proliferous cones. As to the development of ovules earlier 
than the say they wake to, this is said to have been observed in some Angiosperms also, as in Cuscuta, in which at 
first four naked ovules ear. The anatomical organogenist ra _— from this that ovules and carpels are inde- 
pendent scene omy Ait Celakovsky insists that he will argue wro 
This brings our author to the consideration of the structure of “Ta axinee. This is environed with ae and 
explanation is only conjectural. Here the disc, arillus, cupula, or whatever it be called, makes its a 
no trace of carpellary scale is to be seen. Celakovsky inclines to the view that this organ, occurring in w whites form, 
is most probably the carpellary scale itself, very tardily developed. In Dacrydium the cupule is homologous with 
that of Zaxus, but oblique. Cephalotaxus has no scale and no cupule, but seems to correspond with Cupressinew, and 
shows at maturity a small flattened rudiment between the two ovules, which is probably a rudimental carpel-scale. 
Ginkgo is the most puzzling ; yet it seems probable that the biovuliferous peduncle represents the abietinous carpel- . 
scale, the peduncle itself being its elongated base. The cupule of Taxus may be either a simple circular carpel, or may 
consist of more than one carpel. The apparently terminal ovule of Taxus and Torreya he would regard as axillary to 
one of the uppermost subtending bract-scales ; for he will not concede that the ovule can be wholly destitute of a car- 
pellary organ. Yet he might do so, in one sense ; for if the carpel may develop very late and very a or very 
little, it may sometimes not visibly appear at all, and so the phyllome be reduced to the ovular outgr 
’ Finally Celakovsky notes, that if the ovule of Taxus and Torreya be axillary to an Soames: an it 
would originate not from the dorsal but from the ventral face, i. e. from the upper side of the leaf; a [313] 
would distinguish Taxinee from all true Conifere —a view which would not be destitute of important sup- 
port, For both Braun and Mohl have seen apparently androgynous scales in some Abietinee, In a aicshe Larch- 
ament, among carpellary scales with normally dorsal ovules Braun found one with ovules on the opposite face ; and 
Mohl describes and figures an androgynous inflorescence of White Spruce, with pollen-sacs on the outer face, and on 
the other a pair of knobs which from their form and position might be taken for imperfectly developed ovules. But 
this latter case seems most ambiguous. If it was in a male catkin, the upper part of which had become female by the 
development of carpel-scales in the axil of stamens partially oe into bracts (which is the case we have before 
us in a monstrosity of Hemlock Spruce), then the quasi-androgynous scale in question may have been the normal 
abietinous pe rs itself, with the polliniferous bract behind it oe connate with it. 
he rogynous spike of Hemlock Spruce before us is below normally staminate; above some anthers are 
slightly asia at one side of the projecting tip, another has this wing developed tito a bract-like body on the 
whole of one side; next there is a bract with a single small pollen-sac on one side of its back, and in its axil a well- 
formed and biovulate carpel-scale. — Amer. Journ. Sci. and Arts, 3d Series, vol. xviii., Oct. 1879. 
ON THE FEMALE FLOWERS OF THE CONIFER. 
nder this heading Professor Eichler of pera Rives: his latest — ations this ampértant gush in the 
Monatsberichte der K. Asad. der Wiss., Berlin, 1881. ts of the present [419] 
day are agreed that the male flowers are the agatenate of stamens which were formerly (and still tn Parlatore in 
DeC. Prodromus) considered an ament, i. e. an inflorescence. He now tries to prove that what we call the female 
ament is perfectly conformed and corresponding in every respect to the male flower in position as well as in structure, 
and thus is also a single flower and not an inflorescence. 
he simplicity of such an arrangement, the uniformity in the structure of the male and female organs thus estab- 
lished, are certainly seductive, and in the author’s opinion the difficulties in his way are readily enough removed. The 
principal difficulty is found in the presence of two foliaceous organs in the female flower, one, now called the ovule- 
bearing or carpellary scale, inside of another, the bract, while the male flower consists of a number of simple pollen- 
bearing bracts (the stamens) arranged around the axis. Now, according to Professor Eichler’s view, the carpellary 
scale is not a distinct organ, but really only an appendage, a ventral excrescence, a ligule, if it may be called so, of a 
leaf (the bract), born from it and belonging to it ; he therefore recognizes only one organ, the bract, and the so-called 
carpellary scale as its sepentaee: a view already indicated by Sachs. He reviews and controverts the views of pre- 
ceding morphologists. Robert Brown declared the carpellary scale to be a leaf in the axil of the bract ; but this is a 
morphological impossibility. Schleiden and Strasburger took it for a flattened axis; but the arrangement of the 
bundles of vessels makes that untenable. Van Tieghem thought it was a leaf median on an ena feng a 
but Conifer never do produce such median leaves. A. Braun, and after him Caspary, were the firs recogniz 
the scale a compound organ, consisting of two lateral leaves of such an undeveloped bud, connate on es lower ids; 
Oersted, and more decidedly Mohl, showed that these two leaves were connate with their posterior edges, turning their 
backs toward the main axis, and Mohl happily compared the scale thus constituted with the double leaf of Sciadopitys ; 
this, however, seems impossible to Professor Eichler, because nothing is seen of such an assumed undeveloped axillary 
bud, and because the distribution of the vessels in the scale does not indicate a double origin, as it does distinctly in 
the Sciadopitys leaf. 
49 
