452 



STRUCTURE AND AFFINITIES OF LEPIDOSTROBI. 



Fig. 1. 



To illustrate this properly, the following illustrations (fig. 1), were 

 prepared. That at Plate 8, fig. 11, should be compared with this 



wood-cut, where the only material 

 difference between them is in the 

 shape of the sporangium. The 

 spores c, from L. Selago, should be 

 compared with those of Plate 5, 

 figs. 7, 8, 9 ; Plate 6, figs. 11 and 

 12; Plate 8, fig. 10; and Plate 

 10, fig. 3. 



Previous to the investigations 

 of M. Brongniart, the prevailing 

 opinion with regard to these cones 

 was, that they belonged to plants 

 of the Pine tribe. Their great 

 size and the presence of coniferous 

 wood in the coal formation both 

 favour this supposition. 



It is, however, well known to the 

 botanist, not only that cones are 

 far from being peculiar to one 

 natural order of plants, but that 

 their extreme form is no indica- 

 tion, either of their contents, or of the affinities of the plants which 

 produced them. Accordingly, we find that Dr. Lindley, the first 

 English observer who published any extended views on the affinities of 

 these plants, suggests the probability of their being referable either to 

 ConifercB, Lycopodiacece, or more probably still to Cycadece* 



The scales, to whose arrangement the production of a cone is due, 

 are in no essential respect different from those that occur on other parts 

 of the plant. The doctrine of morphology teaches us, that the cone 

 is nothing more than the leafy apex of a branch, whose leaves are 

 modified in form, generally to the end that they shall perform the 

 office of protecting organs to reproductive bodies ; this is the case with 

 the Pine cone, that of the Lycopodium or club-moss, and many other 

 plants. 



Cases are however not unfrequent, of what may be termed false 

 cones, which have no relation to the reproductive organs of the plant. 

 In some species, they are common, and are naturally produced, as in 

 the well-known cone-bearing willow, and in the larch, which produces 

 barren cones, unconnected in every way with those containing the 

 seeds. 



* Lindley and Hutton, Fossil Flora, t. 11, sub. L. variabilis. 



