IV.— ANALYTICAL DRAWINGS OF 
CONIFERS. 
R ECENT discoveries among fossil plants have done much to bridge over the 
gap separating Flowering from Flowcrless Plants. A group of plants has 
been found having fern-like fronds associated with stems with a structure resembling 
those of Gymnosperms and with fully-formed seeds. Of the existing Classes of 
Gymnosperms, these plants are nearest to the Cycade<e ; but it is not at all certain that 
we are now justified in classing Cycade<e , Conferee^ and Gretace^e in the one Division 
Gymnospermia , if by so doing we mean to suggest that they have had one common 
ancestry. They may have originated independently from different branches of the 
great alliance or Sub-kingdom of Pteridophyta or fern-like plants. As the Cycads 
appear to be descended from fern-like plants, so the Conifer are, perhaps, more 
closely related to the Lycopodin<e or Club-mosses. 
While all existing Gymnosperms are trees, or at least woody, it has been 
suggested that the ancestral forms of these groups and of the fruit-bearing Division of 
Flowering Plants or Angiospermia may probably have been smaller herbaceous forms. 
There seems to be clear evidence that most of the main divisions of the 
Gymnosperms go back to a remote geological past ; and, whatever may have been 
their order of origin, they may still be tentatively united by the character of the 
seed, which is not enclosed in an ovary, becomes partly filled with a nutrient tissue 
or archisperm resembling the prothallus in the megaspore of Selaginella , before 
fertilisation, and is pollinated directly, without the intervention of a stigma. 
Some hesitation has also been felt as to whether we can even assign a common 
origin to all those trees which we term Conferee , the Maidenhair-tree, Ginkgo biloba 
Linne, of China and Japan, presenting many very isolated characters, coupled 
apparently with a great geological antiquity. Even the two Natural Orders, 
Araucariaceee and Taxacece — into which all the Class Conferee is now divided, and 
both of which have British representatives — are very widely separated ; and the very 
ancient divergence of their various subdivisions is illustrated by the fact that no 
species and very few genera of Conferee are common to both the Northern and 
the Southern Hemisphere. Of the thirty-seven genera, in fact, fourteen are 
northern, twelve are southern, and nine are confined to the Chino-Japanese area. 
Conferee agree in being woody plants, usually with one main stem of 
preponderating development and slight branches apparently whorled. The wood 
is added to exogenously by annual rings. Their leaves are usually either flat scales 
closely adpressed to the stem or are narrow, needle-shaped, or linear. Most of them 
are evergreen and have the thick cuticle and sunken stomata of xerophytes. 
They are all wind-pollinated, producing enormous quantities of light pollen, but no 
nectar, whilst a drop of viscid liquid appearing in the micropyle of the ovule receives 
the pollen-grain and draws it down to the nucellus or body of the ovule. Pollen and 
