Geology and Nutural History. 419 
Berlin, 1881. He takes it for gr anted that the morphologists of the 
pre esent day are agreed that the male flowers are the aggregate of 
stamens which were hcidssty (and still by Parlatore in DeC. Pro- 
dromus) considered an D . an inflorescence. He now tries 
to prove that what we call the female ament is perfectly con- 
formed and c Spice: ig in eve ry po aaey he the male flower in 
The pany of such an arrangement, the uniformity in the 
structure of the male and female organs thus established, are 
areal seduotiy ive, and in the author i i 
ov o 
inside of another, the bract, while the male flower consists of a 
number of simple pollen-bearing bracts (the —— arranged 
around the axis. (ow, accor ing to Profes ichler’s view, 
the carpellary seale is not a distinct sian, aor really only 
an appendage, a ventral excrescence, a ligule, if it may be 
called so, of a leaf (the bract), born from it and belonging 
to it; he therefore recognizes only one organ, the bract, and 
the so-called carpellary oi as its appendage—a view already 
indicated by Sachs. He reviews and controverts the views of pre- 
ceding morphologists. Hakers Brown declared the carpellary scale 
to b af in the axil of the bract; but this is a morphological 
impossibility. Schleiden and Strasbur ger took it for a flattened 
AXIS 5 Lee the arrangement oh = bundles of vessels makes that 
untena ghem as a leaf median on an 
dadevshiped axillary “bud, bet "Conifer never do produce such 
median leaves. A. Braun, ‘and after him Caspary, were the first to 
Oy) 
were connate with their posterior edges, turning their backs 
toward the main axis, and Mohl happily compared the scale thus 
preetituted with the double leaf of Sciadopitys; this, however, 
seems impossible to Professor Eichler, because nothing is seen of 
uch an assumed undeveloped axillary bud, and because the dis- 
seibuso of the vessels in the scale does not indicate a double 
origin, as it does distinetly in the Sciadopitys leaf. 
Professor Eichler insists that the carpellary scale of Conifers, 
though often apparently separated from the bract, is really not a 
d : 
sal side is “aareel toward the back of the leit, and in either case 
the arrangement of the vascular elements is reversed. In every 
