io8 ANCIENT PLANTS 



a. series of expanded scales below these again, which it 

 takes little imagination to picture as incipient petals and 

 sepals; and behold — the thing is a flower! 



And being a " flower ", is in closest connection with 

 the ancestors of the modern flowering plants, which must 

 consequently have evolved from some Cycadean - like 

 ancestor which also gave rise to the Bennettitales. Thus 

 can the flowering plants be linked on to the series that 

 runs through the Cycads directly to the primitive ferns! 



It is evident that this group, of all those known 

 among the fossils, comes most closely to an approxi- 

 mation of Angiospermic structure and arrangement. 

 Enough has been said to show that in their actual 

 nature they are not Anmosperms, though they have 

 some of their characters, while at the same time they are 

 not Cycads, though they have their appearance. They 

 stand somewhere between the two. Though many 

 botanists at present hold that this mixture of characters 

 indicates a relationship equivalent to a kind of cousin- 

 ship with the Angiosperms, and both groups may be 

 supposed to have originated from a Cycadean stock, this 

 theory has not yet stood the test of time, nor is it sup- 

 ported by other evidence from the fossils. We will go 

 so far as to say that it appears as though some Angio- 

 sperms arose in that way; but flowering plants show so 

 many points utterly differing from the whole Cycadean 

 stock that a little scepticism may not be unwholesome. 



It is well to remember the Lycopods, where (as we 

 shall see, p. 141) structures very like seeds were devel- 

 oped at the time when the Lycopods were the dominant 

 plants, and we do not find any evidence to prove that 

 they led on to the main line of seed plants. Similarly, 

 Cycads may have got what practically amounted to 

 flowers at the time when they were the dominant group, 

 and it is very conceivable that they did not lead on to 

 the main line of flowering plants. 



Whatever view may be held, however, and whatever 

 may be the future discoveries relating to this group of 



