570 ORGANIC IDENTITY OF THE ALBUMEN, ETC. 
kernel) and is encased within a one-seeded pistil, as is the case 
e. g. with all grasses, grains and the knot-weeds; their true ovules 
being mostly sessile (as in the entire orders of Polygonacee 
and Nyctaginacez, with only few exceptions) and considerably co- 
herent with the true pistil (or stigmatiferous “utricle”). In the 
above-mentioned coniferous tribes, these one-seeded pistils are 
provided with a pervious, “open” stigma; a case correspondingly 
represented in the duck-weeds (Lemnacez) which however have 
their seeds borne upon a funiculus. 
The seed itself, of Conifers, is a complete one, consisting (1) 
of a germ; (2) an (oily) albumen and (3) one thin, brown, mem- 
branaceous seed-coat (the testa), readily separating from the utri- 
cle or nut-shell which surrounds it, as in the well-known cases of 
the pine-nuts of California, Italy and that of Switzerland (Pinus 
lembra). 
Thus, it is clear that the pine-scales are only a woody cup or 
cob, of indurated “ saucers” or involucres (as with acorns) that 
arise in the axils of delicate and sometimes colored bracts. Sim- 
ilar involucral cups we find in the harsh cones of the alder, and in 
the sterile aments of the wild hemp tribe. 
The wing-like appendages of the pine-nuts represent so many 
palee or floral chaff (like that of grains and bulrushes, etc). 
In the remarkable case of Welwitschia, the ‘‘ kettle-drum pine” 
of western tropical Africa, no such indurated scales, but only the 
purpureous bracts, as are those of flowering larch-trees, are devel- 
oped. The true perianth—judging by Dr. J. D. Hooker’s plate 
viii—being here a delicate, foliaceous two-winged one, epigy- 
nously concrete with the nut, as is the chaff of pines and two-seeded | 
capsules of Araucariz. Nevertheless, the same identical organ 
is erroneously styled ‘a pericarp” on the preceding plates, by a 
OPES calami of the same author, on the uncritical bias of so-called 
‘“gymnospermism.” * The so-called gymnosperms have closed 
pistils ! 
It is thus clear, that there is no “break” in the vegetable king- 
dom: all ae uniting into a complete, connected and harmonious 
*The untenable theory, here referred to, considers the pine-scale as a “ pistil;” des- 
titute, however, of any of the distinctive attributes of a a pistil, being without a suture 
without a stigma, and without any fructification ee its instrumentali 
The true (one-seeded, pluri-ovulate) ar or “ utricle,” was wrongly regarded as 
(abnormally “ naked” ) “ovule”; with a sneha ally rostrate “ exostome,” viz: the 
(open) stigma! Next follows (after this jao “ testa”) the true seed-coat under the 
Pe es OP ae ae CL ee VE ORS gre eee eRe et Se eS oe ee eee EA 
