Botany.] 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
657 
than as belonging to the ovulum; but in Gnetum, where 
three envelopes exist, two of these may, with great pro- 
bability, be regarded as coats of the nucleus ; while in Po- 
docarpus and Dacrydium, the outer cupula, as I formerly 
termed it *, may also, perhaps, be viewed as the testa of the 
ovulum. To this view, as far as relates to Dacrydium, the 
longitudinal fissure of the outer coat in the early stage, and 
its state in the ripe fruit, in which it forms only a partial 
covering, may be objected t. But these objections are, in a 
great measure, removed by the analogous structure already 
described in Bunksia and Dryandra. 
The plurality of embryos sometimes occurring in Co- 
niferse, and which, in Cycadese, seems even to be the na- 
tural structure, may also, perhaps, be supposed to form 
an objection to the present opinion, though to me it appears 
rather an argument in its favour. 
Upon the whole, the objections to which the view here 
taken of the structure of these two families is still liable, 
seem to me, as far as I am aware of them, much less im- 
portant than those that may be brought against the other 
opinions that have been advanced, and still divide botanists 
on this subject. 
According to the earliest of these opinions, the female 
flower of Cycadeee and Coniferae is a monospermous pistil- 
lum, having no proper floral envelope. 
To this structure, however, Pinus itself was long con- 
sidered by many botanists as presenting an exception. 
Linnseus has expressed himself so obscurely in the natural 
character which he has given of this genus, that I find it 
difficult to determine vvhat his opinion of its structure really 
* Flinders’s Voy. vol. ii. p. 573. 
t Id, loc. cit. 
