the Sporophylls of the Cycadaceae. 2 1 9 
may be aptly compared with Fig. 8 (in the text) of Weber and 
Sterzel’s work 1 , and with Fig. 9, Plate V of Solms’ paper. It 
will be seen that in the bundles of the fossil plants secondary 
xylem is present in all three parts in considerable quantity, 
while in those of modern plants this tissue occurs in small 
quantity in the complete dorsal portion only. In a male 
peduncle of Stangeria one of the bundles with its two groups 
of centripetal xylem was traced into the elongated barren 
sporophyll, as above described, when the centripetal xylem - 
groups were found to gradually die out as the bundle passes 
into the sporophyll, so that a purely endarch structure of the 
strand remained. I regard the two ventral groups of xylem 
each with its inner protoxylem-strand, as the remnants of two 
distinct bundles, whose phloem has disappeared and which are 
now more or less separated from each other and from the 
dorsally-placed complete bundle with which, in the ancestors 
of the plant, they formed a compact whole as a concentric 
leaf-trace bundle. 
In the same female peduncles groups of three bundles some 
little distance apart, with their xylems converging, are often 
seen close to the central cylinder. These appear to me to 
represent, in a rather different way, the same phenomenon of 
a vestige of an ancestral concentric strand ; in this case, 
however, the three parts have not become in any way 
reduced, but they have, however, undergone much more 
complete separation from each other than in the previous 
case. 
Bowenia spectabilis, Hook. 
Male Sporophyll. A single bundle leaves the vascular 
cylinder of the axis of the male cone and very soon, almost 
immediately, divides into two. These run through the cortex 
and enter a sporophyll, where they forthwith begin to divide 
up into a number of bundles. 
In the stalk of the sporophyll the bundles are nearly all 
1 Weber u. Sterzel, Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Medulloseae, Chemnitz, 1896 ; 
pp. 17 and 18, Figs. 7 and 8 of text, and Plate III. Solms-Laubach, Ueber 
Medullosa Leuckharti, Bot. Zeit., 1897. 
