Morphological Notes. 
BY 
Sir W. T. THISELTON-DYER, K.C.M.G., C.I.E., F.R.S., 
Director , Royal Botanic Gardens , Kew. 
With Plates XXIV and XXV, and a Figure in the Text. 
VIII. On Polycotyledony. 
I T is the object of these notes as much to suggest problems 
as to solve them. In the present case I propose to tell 
a story of which I do not quite see to the bottom. I impose 
no restrictions on any one disposed to make it a subject of 
speculation. 
My friend Professor Bayley Balfour, in the very suggestive 
address which he delivered from the chair of Section K. at 
the Glasgow Meeting of the British Association, gave a theory 
of the Dicotyledonous Embryo, the main points of which 
I will quote : — 
‘ We ought, I think, to look upon the embryo as a proto- 
corm of embryonic tissue adapted to a seed-life. . . . Confining 
ourselves to the general case, the axial portion of the proto- 
corm of the Dicotyledon, the hypocotyl, bears a pair of 
lateral outgrowths, the cotyledons, and terminates in the 
plumular bud and in the primary root respectively. The 
cotyledons are its suctorial organs, and the hypocotyl does 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XVL No. LXIXI. September, 1902.J 
