606 STRUCTURE AND LIFE HISTORIES 
The axis of the flower terminated in a cone-shaped 
receptacle, bearing the stalked ovules, and numerous 
sterile scales (Figs. 424 and 425). The mature seeds often 
contain the well-preserved fossil embryos, with two 
cotyledons which quite fill out the nucellus, and show 
that there was little or no endosperm. These are char- 
acters never found in the lowest group of modern seed- 
FIG. 428. Flower of magnolia. (Cf. Fig. 429.) 
bearing plants (the Gymnosperms) , but only in the 
highest group of Angiosperms, the Dicotyledons. In 
fact, the French paleobotanist, Saporta, called some of the 
Cycadeoids, Proangios perms. 
621. Relation of Cycadeoidea to Modern Angiosperms. 
The question of the ancestry of the Angiosperms is the 
most important problem of paleobotany. Although the 
Bennetti tales possess many of the primitive anatomical 
