456 ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE FEMALE FLOWER 



generic character, and from an observation recorded in his 

 JPrcelectiones, pubUshed by Giseke.-^ 



But the first clear account that I have met vpith, of the 

 real structure of Pinus, as far as regards the direction, or 

 base and apex of the female flowers, is given, in 1767, by 

 Trew, who describes them in the following manner : — " Sin- 

 gula semina vel potius germina stigmati tanquam organo 

 feminino gaudent,"^ and his figure of the female flower of 

 the Larch, in which the stigmata project beyond the base of 

 the scale, removes all doubt respecting his meaning. 



In 1789, M. de Jussieu, in the character of his genus 

 Abies,^ gives a similar account of structure, though some- 

 what less clearly as well as less decidedly expressed. In 

 the observations that follow, he suggests, as not improbable, 

 a very different view, founded on the supposed analogy 

 with Araucaria, whose structure was then misunderstood ; 

 namely, that the inner scale of the female amentijm is a 

 bilocular ovarium, of which the outer scale is the style. But 

 this, according to Sir James Smith,* was also Linnseus's 

 opinion ; and it is the view adopted in Mr. Lambert's 

 splendid monograph of the genus published in 1803. 



In the same year in which Mr. Lambert's work appeared, 

 Schkuhr' describes, and very distinctly figures, the female 

 flower of Pinus, exactly as it was understood by Trew, 

 whose opinion was probably unknown to him. 

 659] In 1807 a memoir on this subject, by Mr. Salisbury, 

 was published,® in which an account of structure is given, 

 in no important particular different from that of Trew and 

 Schkuhr, with whose observations he appears to have been 

 unacquainted. 



M. Mirbel, in 1809,'' held the same opinion, both with 

 respect to Pinus and to the whole natural family. But in 

 1812, in conjunction with M. Schoubert,^ he proposed a 



1 Prceleci. in Ord. Nat. p. 589. 



2 Nov. Act. Acad. Nat. Curios, iii, p. 453, tab. 13, flg. 33. 



3 Gen. PL p. 4U. 



* Rees's Cyclop, art. Pinus. 



5 Botan. Handb. iii, p. 276, tab. 308. 



'' Linn. Soc. Transact, viii, p. 308. 



' Ann. ditMus. d'liist. Nat. torn, xy, p. 473. 



" Nouv. Bulletin des Sc. torn, iii, pp. 73, 85, ei 121. 



