8 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



into a warm, dry place, all the upper scales of most of 

 them will open, a few may open on one side only, and 

 possibly one or two will remain closed. At the base of 

 some of the scales of a fully opened cone there will be 

 found two seeds, at the base of others, one only, while the 

 greater number of the scales will be found giving shelter 

 to seedless wings. It will be noticed that the seeds are 

 of two colours, black and grey, the former are sound, the 

 latter but empty husks. 



The unsymmetrically opened cones will be found to 

 contain seeds — sound or unsound — on the opened side 

 only; the unopened ones, as might be expected, are 

 practically empty. Although a large and well-formed 

 cone has about fifty ovuliferous scales, and each scale is 

 capable of bearing two seeds, it is very unusual to find 

 one containing more than thirty seeds, from ten to 

 fifteen is the more common number. These figures have 

 been obtained from the tabulated record of nearly 500 

 cones. 



The total number of scales upon a cone varies con- 

 siderably, 94 being the highest, and 55 the lowest I have 

 found. The number of ovuliferous scales varies also, but 

 as these merge almost imperceptably into the non- 

 ovuliferous, they cannot so readily be enumerated, but 

 taking those only about which there could be no reasonable 

 doubt, the highest number I found was 53, and the lowest 

 34. Counting the scales upon 500 cones I found the mean 

 per cone to be 75. The ovuliferous scales gave a mean of 

 48, thus providing for 96 possible seeds per cone. But, as 

 already stated, the number usually produced being only 

 10 or 15, there is evidently an enormous wastage, to 

 realise the extent of which it will be necessary to make 

 some further observations. 



This wastage, enormous as it is, is not comparable 



