446 Solms-L cutback.— On the Fructification 
between the c cords/ which overtop the seeds, and, becoming 
clavately broader at the apex, unite there with one another to 
form the continuous external layer. The formation of the 
seed-bearing cavities is explicable in this way, and perhaps 
more naturally than by the earlier theory; and it finds a strong 
support in the circumstance that, as was shown above on p. 438, 
this continuous external layer may be followed to the very 
base of the fructification, and grows at the lowest margin 
directly out of the tissue of the ‘cushion,’ thus occurring in 
places where there are no longer any seed-stalks (see PL 
XXV, Figs. 8 and 10). 
From all these considerations we arrive at something like 
the following conception of the entire fossil. We have in the 
fructification (spadix) two kinds of organs of different character 
and closely crowded together; the seed-stalks (cords) di- 
verging above cluster-wise, and each terminating in a seed ; 
and the interstitial organs increasing constantly in length 
from the periphery of the cluster towards the inside, ap- 
pearing by themselves in the periphery but mixed with the 
seed- stalks further in, overtopping the seeds with their apices, 
and forming by the union of their apices the homogeneous 
tissue-layer of the surface of the fructification. In con- 
sequence of this arrangement every seed is sunk in a pit, the 
orifice of which then narrows over the seed owing to the 
lateral overgrowth of its walls 1 . 
If we now try to realise the nature of the surface-view of a 
spadix having a longitudinal section answering to our scheme, 
we shall be inclined to think of it as marked with areolae 
or compartments corresponding to the upper extremities 
of the several interstitial organs, and between these there 
must be narrow openings leading to the seed-cavities below. 
After the account given above on page 438, of the inden- 
tations and areolations at the base of the surface of the 
spadix, I have no doubt that such a division into areolae is 
in fact present everywhere, and that each areola was raised, 
1 See on this point the diagrammatic figure in my Einleitung in die Palaeophy- 
tologie [Fossil Botany, Fig. 5 A , p. 96]. 
