ON THE PLUEALITY, &c/ 



The following short paper on a subject which I intend 

 to treat at greater length, contains a few facts of sufficient 

 interest perhaps to admit of its being received as a com- 

 munication to the present meeting. 



In my observations on the structure of the female flower 



1 Read before the British Association at Edinburgh in Aua;usfc 1834, and 

 published in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles for October 1 843. Tlie fol^ 

 lowing abstract was given in the "Report of the Eourth Meeting of the, British 

 Association," 1835, pp. S96-7: — "Tlie earliest observations of the author on 

 this subject were made in the Summer of 1828, soon after thb publication of 

 his remai'ks on the female flower of Cj/caiets and Conifene. He then found 

 that in several Coniferm, namely, Finns Strobtts, Abies excelsa, and the common 

 Larch, the plurality of embryos in the impregnated ovulum was equally con- 

 stant, and their arrangement in the albumen as regular as in CycadecB ; and 

 similar observations made during the present summer on several otiier species, 

 especially Finns sylvestris and P. Pinaster^ render it highly probable that tlie 

 same structure exists in the whole family. The first change which takes place 

 in the impregnated ovulum of the Coniferte examined, is the production or 

 separation of a solid body within the original nucleus. In this inner body, or 

 albumen, several subeylindrioal corpuscula, of a somewhat different colour and 

 consistence from the mass of the albumen, seated near its apex and arranged 

 in a circular series, soon become visible. In each of these corpuscula, wliioh 

 are from three to six in number, a single thread or funiculus, consisting of 

 several, generally of four, elongated cells or vessels, with or without transverse 

 septa, originates. The funiculi are not unfrequently ramified, each brancli or 

 division terminating in a minute rudiment of an embryo. But as the lateral 

 branches of the funiculi usually consist of a single elongated cell or vessel, 

 while the principal or terminal branch is generally formed of more than one, 

 embryos in Comferis may'originate either in one or in several cells, even in the 

 same funiculus. A similar ramification in the funiculi of the Cycas circinalis 

 has been observed by the author. Instances of the occasional introduction of 

 more than one embryo in the seeds of the several plants belonging to other 

 families have long been known, but their constant plurality and regular arrange- 

 ment have hitherto only been observed in Cycadea and Coniferce." 



