386 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ON CONIFER. 
Professor Eichler insists that the carpellary scale of Conifere, though often apparently separated from the bract, 
is really not a distinct organ, but, as stated above, a ligular appendage of the upper face of the bract. He shows that 
in such appendages the vascular bundles are always arranged in a system opposite to that of the leaf from which they 
originate ; if they spring from the upper side of the leaf, this upper side is turned toward the upper side of the leaf, and 
if they come from the dorsal side, their dorsal side is turned toward the back of the leaf, and in either case the 
arrangement of the vascular elements is reversed. In every leaf the xylem (wood-cells) occupies the upper or [420] 
ventral side of the vascular bundle, and the phloém (formerly bast or soft bast-cells) lies below it or toward the 
dorsal side of the leaf. This is so in the coniferous leaf as in all others, and in the bract, while the ligule or carpellary 
scale shows the arrangement reversed, — a well-established fact. This carpellary scale wherever it exists (principally in 
Abietinee) bears on its back one or several ovules. In Araucaria it is a small process, of ligular form, from the middle 
of the leat-bract, with one ovule ; in Cunninghaméa it is a narrow transverse crest with three ovules ; in Cryptomeria it 
is a jagged crest, at last wg larger tban the bract itself ; but in Damara no trace of an appendage can be found. The 
same is the case with most Taxodinee, where only a certain thickening of the bract is noticeable. But in Abietinew we 
see two apparently iintinch organs ; examining them, however, more closely, we find them always cohering at base, and 
where they at maturity separate from the axis as in Abies and Cedrus, they fall off together, as they should do, where one 
is only an appendage of the other. In Cupressinee no carpel-bearing appendage at all is observed, and the ovules are 
as nearly axillary as possible, or, where there are many, they seem to spring partly from the base of the bract and 
partly from the axis itself ; but the thickened upper side of the scale shows also a reversed arrangement of the vessels, 
“as it cannot be otherwise, where the leaf is so thickened on the inner side that at last it even becomes peltate.” The 
other Conifere follow the same rule, the ovules stand in the axil of the bract ; but in Taxinee they are terminal products, 
surrounded by the uppermost leaves or bracts. 
The proliferation sometimes observed in the female flowers of Abietinee has been thought to furnish proof for the 
axillary nature and distinctness of the carpel ; but Professor Eichler is satisfied that the abnormally developed branchlet 
is not the development of a supposed carpellary axis, but a really new axillary production of the bract therefore between 
the carpellary appendage and the main axis, and that the division of the carpel into two pieces, often noticed in such 
monstrosities, is produced by pressure only. 
Eichler then compare the ovule of the Conifere to the sporangium of allied vascular cryptogams, and finds in 
Tsoetes the sporangium on the base of the leaf where also a ligula is present, in Lycopodium in the axils, and in Psilotum, 
at the end of branchlets. The essential character of gymnospermy, however, he finds not as much in the open carpel 
which also occurs in some higher organized plants, as in the absence of a stigma and in the immediate action of the 
pollen on the ovule. 
n a second paper, “Ueber Bildungsabweichungen bei Fichtenzapfen ” (Sitzungsb. d. K. Ac. Wiss., hy yar 
Professor Eichler gives us a careful analysis of monstrosities observed on the Norway Spruce, and of one on 
Himalaya Hemlock, and tries to show how former interpreters had misunderstood their teaching, and how tie 
examples fully confirm his own views, expressed in the foregoing paper. He has procured the very specimens [421] 
which Stenzel, Willkomm, Oersted, and Parlatore had examined, analyzed them with great care, and gives figures 
and sections of the principal forms found. He demonstrates that the so-called fruit-scale in those monstrous cones is 
not divided into two lateral leaves, but becomes irregularly toothed, folded or lobed, sometimes simulating two or more 
eaves, and finally develops a knob and at last a bud, which may ail does sometimes grow out into a branch, always 
on the inside of and adnate to the metamorphosed scale, i. e. on the side toward the axis of the cone, often enveloped 
by its folds, but never between it and the bract, which ought to be the case if the now prevailing view of the nature of 
the scale (as formed by two lateral leaves connate on their axial side) were true. 
Unfortunately he has not had occasion to examine such monstrosities where these two leaves are foliaceous, partly 
or entirely distinct, ~~ not from the base but from the very axil of the bract, and not divided by any possible 
pressure, such as occur at the base, not at the top, of proliferous cones of Tsuga Canadensis. In such cones the trans- 
formation progresses pe a pair of separate leaves in the axil of a leaf-like bract to the partly united, then to the small 
and notched scale, at last to the large ovuliferous scale in the axil of a small retuse bract. 
It may be stated in passing, that the first lateral bracts at the base of a shoot, in pines at least, are not inclined 
outward or toward the supporting bract, but rather decidedly inward, toward the axis, and are overlapping on the 
inner and upper side of the shoot, leaf-bundle, or flower. 
Professor Eichler has given us a very valuable contribution towards the solution of the interesting question he 
treats of ; but he has not os settled it, and it will continue to tax the ingenuity of morphologists—Amer. Journ. Sci. and 
Arts, 3d Series, vol. xxi 
THE FEMALE FLOWERS OF CONIFER. 
Professor Eichler’s paper on this subject, reviewed in the May number of this Journal, has induced Professo: 
Celakovsky to re-investigate this subject, morphologically so important, and to which he had already devoted st 
attention. In the Abhandl. d. K. Boehm. Ges. d. Wiss. he has recently published his present views, in an extensive 
