46 
Thoday . — Anatomy of the Ovule and Seed in 
recorded in an earlier paper on an abnormal ovule of Welwitschia} and 
Pearson 2 described a fourth covering in the fertile ovule found at the base 
of a male spike in G. africanum . 
G. funicular e. 
The material of G v funicular e , kindly sent me from Buitenzorg, was riot 
very well preserved, and has therefore not been investigated in great 
detail. 
The small ovule . In the small ovules, up to about 5 mm. long, the 
three coverings are all free from one another. The outer one is already 
very fibrous. The upper portion of the micropylar tube had a very 
heavily cuticularized lining, like that of Ephedra , 3 and contained a mass of 
hardened mucilage. Lower down, just above the tip of the middle covering, 
the lining of the tube ceases to be cuticularized, and the regularity of its 
cells is disturbed by a tendency to grow out into papillae. There seems to 
have been no increase in thickness in the wall of the tube, which consists of 
about the same number of layers, 5-7, throughout, and at this stage there is 
no flange. Some of the larger aborted ovules showed a few large irregular 
hairs growing out from the surface of the micropylar tube to form the 
flange. 
From just above to some distance below the tip of the middle covering 
the micropyle is closed by the subdivided papillae, which form a solid rod of 
remarkably definite appearance, even more sharply defined than in the 
papillate region in G. Gnenion . 4 
The tip of the middle covering expands at the shoulders of the seed, 
but at this stage contains very little lignified tissue. Below the shoulders 
there is a layer of somewhat thickened horizontally running fibres. In the 
lower portion of the inner integument, below the micropylar tube, there are 
a large number of wide and strongly lignified fibres, which die out at 
the level of fusion with the nucellus. 
The seeds . In the large seeds , about 3 cm. long, the outer covering 
is still more fibrous, there being two distinct zones of fibres, an inner and an 
outer, with thin-walled tissue between. At the apex the micropylar tube is 
closely approximated to the outer covering, and it appears to be fused with 
it for a short distance. The fused portion of the tube is, however, very short ; 
it becomes free from the outer covering almost at once ; there is a small 
flange, composed of a very few gigantic and very strongly lignified hairs 
or papillae, some aSove the fused region upwardly directed, some projecting 
downwards over the tip of the middle covering ; they more or less fill up the 
chink between the top of the middle covering and the outer covering. The 
2 Pearson, 1915, p. 322. 
4 Photo 11, PI. I. 
1 Sykes, 1910, Fig. 12, p. 199. 
3 Thoday and Berridge, 1912, p. 964. 
