435 
of Bennettites gibsonianus, Carr . 
when I was studying the genus Bemvettites for my c Einleitung 
in die Palaeophytologie,’ and yet profounder study places 
me already under the necessity of modifying the account 
contained in that publication in some not unimportant 
points. 
To form the spadix the axis terminates in a slightly flat- 
tened hemisphere 1 on which a whole cluster of closely crowded 
organs takes its rise. Its succulent parenchyma, which 
consists of thin-walled cells with wide lumina, is generally 
destroyed, though it is better preserved in some of the slices 
in the British Museum. The vascular bundle-system of the 
shoot which bears the spadix comes to an end in the 
parenchyma ; beneath its convex apex may be seen 
numerous sections of small bundles which have different 
directions, and evidently supply the members of the cluster 
of organs which proceed from it. This is shown in a figure 
of Carruthers 2 , which is not however very perfect. 
On the convex upper surface of the apex, or ‘cushion’ as 
it is termed by Carruthers, the seed-bearing ‘ cords’ take their 
rise, a closely crowded cluster of erect stalk-like bodies united 
into a club-shaped mass. In studying it minutely we shall 
do well to begin with a transverse section immediately be- 
neath the upper convexity of the fleshy ‘ cushion.’ Examin- 
ing the section with a lens, we distinguish at once a main 
central mass and a thin zone which surrounds this and in its 
turn separates into two successive layers. The central portion 
presents the picture given in a figure by Carruthers 3 , which 
shows the irregularly polygonal transverse sections of the 
‘ cords ’ imbedded in a homogeneous fundamental tissue, the 
‘ fleshy pericarp ’ of Carruthers’ description. However, exactly 
transverse sections teach us that this apparent fundamental 
tissue is by no means homogeneous, but is composed of the 
transverse sections of very many smaller organs pressed close 
to one another and filling up the intervals between the ‘ cords ’ 
1 Carruthers, pi. 59, fig. 3, reproduced here in Plate XXV, fig. 9. 
* Carruthers, loc. cit., pi. 60, fig. 4. 
3 See pi. 60, fig. 1. 
