66 Worsdell . — The Struchire and Morphology of the 4 Ovule! 
as everywhere of similar morphological dignity ; the placenta, on the 
other hand, as possessing a varying morphological value. But in 1878, in 
the second volume of the same work, he becomes an adherent of the 
v 
foliolar theory, and says : ‘ I must side with Celakovsky and accept both 
his placental and ovular theory from beginning to end.’ It is in the 
Botanisches Centralblatt for 1882, in his well-known thesis on the female 
flower of the Coniferae, that we find him finally throwing in his lot with 
the professors of the sui generis hypothesis ; his observations on the coni- 
ferous ovule have evidently altogether influenced him in taking this step, 
for, after referring to the varying positions of this organ in the different 
genera of Coniferae, he says : ‘ We must, therefore, give up the idea that the 
ovule everywhere corresponds either to a leaf-segment or everywhere to 
a bud arising as a rule from the metamorphosis of those structures ; it is 
rather the more or less modified macrosporangium of the higher plants 
[Vascular Cryptogams] which has been inherited by the Phanerogams, 
representing, like that organ, a structure sui generis. It may be compared 
to an emergence which it cannot be the exclusive privilege of leaves to 
produce, nor may it be regarded as invariably occurring on shoots ; on the 
contrary, we must recognize that the ovule, like other emergences, may 
arise as well on the one as on the other organ, or on the margin of both, 
i. e. in the axil : this is not only clearly the case in the Coniferae, but 
undoubtedly also in the Angiosperms.’ 
Bayley Balfour’s view (72) resembles that of Strasburger, as clearly 
shown by the following statement : 4 1 do not share a view which sees 
in integuments or other parts of the ovule anything of an axile or of a 
foliar nature. To me the funicle is a sporangiophore or a sporangial 
stalk, and the integumentary system is an outgrowth of the sporangial 
primordium of somewhat variable origin and development,’ &c. As regards 
the schools of botanists who interpret the ovule from the standpoint of 
teratology and vascular anatomy respectively, he says : 4 1 do not accept 
the starting-point of either the one or the other.’ Speaking of the sporangium 
his view is as follows: 4 All recent investigations . . . tend to confirm 
the view that it is, and always has been, an organ sui generis . To 
that category the nucellus of the ovule is now pretty generally admitted. 
It is the body of a sporangium.’ His general views on the nature of 
the ovule appear (as in the case of Strasburger) to be chiefly influenced 
by the facts of the individual development, or ontogeny of that organ ; 
and he seems to hold the idea that the integuments, for instance, are 
structures arising de novo in the life-history of the nucellus or sporangium 
to subserve the special physiological function of water-carriers and food- 
reservoirs. 
We have now to take up the consideration of the third, the foliolar * 
theory of the nature of the ovule, that theory which explains this mysterious 
