244 G. Bentham’s Anniversary Address 
no ovary, style, or stigma. indley observed, in 1845 (and 
left the observation unaltered in 1858), that ‘about the accu- 
racy of this view there is at this time no difference of opinion.’ 
Since then, however, Payer, and his disciple Baillon, founding 
their conclusions upon organogenesis, have asserted that it is 
the seed-integument, not the carpellary envelope, that is defi- 
cient—a view whieh has been supported by Parlatore and 
others, refuted by Hooker, Caspary, Eichler, and others, and 
again taken up by Prof. Strasburger, of Jena, after a series of 
careful and detailed organogenetic observations, combined with 
genealogical, or, as they term it, phytogenetical considerations, 
in a remarkable essay entitled ‘Die Coniferen und die Gneta- 
ceen.’ In the attempt to reconcile views apparently so opposite, 
taken by naturalists whom we should all consider of high au- 
thority, we must, perhaps, in some degree, take also into account 
a certain bias which may be observable on either side. From 
the well-known accuracy of Brown’s observations and the sound- 
ovule and seed in other Dicotyledons, and that Conifers have 
great importance in various homological questions, have been 
accuracy and copious details of Hiickel and his followers, but 
at the same time has been the occasion of a free display of Ger- 
man imagination, as I hope presently to show, in considering 
Strasburger’s views of the homologies of Conifers, in conjune- 
tion with some partsof Hickel’s last great work, the Monograph 
of Calcisponges. 
“Tn the first place, we must be careful to consider what we 
mean by homologies of organs. They are of two kinds :— 
the homology of the several appendages to the axis of one an 
the same plant, which in zoology may be compared to the ho- 
mology of the front and hind limbs or of the several vertebr@ 
that very similar afterwa 
developed by Brown. Published, however, in a journal which had but very little 
circulation, is notes remained almost unknown till attention was called to them 8 
Caruel in 1865. Strasburger quotes the passage (with some typographical errors 
