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THE STUDY OF A FIRCONE. 



Mrs. E. hughes GIBB. 



What is a fircone ? and is it worth serious study ? 



The first of these questions is carefully answered in the 

 following article ; the second one the reader must answer for 

 himself at the end. In case, however, he may be deterred by 

 the dry look of man}^ figures and diagrams, and may be tempted 

 to guess at a negative, and to drop his enquiry, I will venture 

 here at the beginning to express my belief that anyone who will 

 allow himself to be attracted by the alluring spiral lines of the 

 fircone, and will give a little time and attention to the study of 

 its arrangement, will find himself amply rewarded, nor will he 

 be likely to go away without some new, perhaps even some 

 startling thoughts to which those spirals point the way. One 

 might ventm-e to say that some of the deepest philosophy of 

 life is epitomised within these cones ; but this is no unusual 

 phenomenon in a world in which the infinitety great is so com- 

 monly to be discovered hidden within the bosom of the in- 

 finitely small. 



Every fircone is a strongly compressed spiral, which, through 

 its compression, presents the appearance of a cone with one 

 series of spirals running to the right, and another series to the 

 left. The true spiral which in its coil passes through every 

 scale in the fircone, is invisible, and must be found by calcula- 

 tion. 



Physiologically a fircone is a transformed branch, the leaves 

 of which, undertaking a different work from that of the ordinary 

 pine ' needles,' have changed their form to suit their purpose ; 

 and have become hard, woody scales, behind which the winged 

 seeds miay safely shelter.* 



* One may remark in passing that these transformations of organs to 

 different uses are quite common in the plant world, ever}^ coloured petal 

 being, in fact, a leaf altered with a purpose, and many green sepals, or 

 flower-envelopes, being capable of developing brilliant colouring in order 

 to serve as petals when these are lacking, or have been devoted to other 

 uses [e.g. in Christmas rose, whose true petals are converted into small 

 green honey pouches) , returning to their plain green colour when the need 

 to attract insect visitors is over. The case of the fircone, then, is no 

 unusual one ; and, as in the coloured flower the transformed leaves are 

 compressed into close whorls instead of being distributed along the stem 

 in the usual way, so in the fircone the scales are pressed together as 

 closely as possible. 



1909 Nov. I, B 2 



