358 Kershaw. — The Structure and Development of 
A free nucellus, therefore, may be regarded as a primitive character which 
has been lost in the greater number of Angiosperms, where the integu- 
ment and nucellus are fused together almost to the apex of the ovule. 
Oliver , 1 in his paper on c The Ovules of the Older Gymnosperms 
suggests that in the seeds of Cycads, &c., where the nucellus is not free 
to the base, ‘ the whole body of the ovule, below the level at which the 
TRIGONOCRRPUS MYRiCR 
Text-Fig. II. Diagrammatic representation of median sections through ovules of Trigono- 
carpus and Myrica Gale to show similar construction of the seed and vascular supply to the integument. 
i •= integument ; i.b. = integumentary vascular bundle; m = main supply bundle; n = nucellar 
vascular supply ; p.c. = pollen chamber. 
nucellus becomes free, is phylogenetically younger than its apical parts,’ 
and ‘ between the original ovule and its insertion a new region has been 
intercalated ’. 
Myrica , therefore, seems to have retained an ancestral character or 
to have reverted to the former state such as obtained in the fossil seeds 
with a free nucellus, and there is no indication of an intercalated por- 
tion such as has been suggested for those seeds where the nucellus and 
surrounding integument are fused together. 
Whether this character is really the ancestral one retained or a 
secondary character almost identical with the ancestral one, can hardly be 
1 Oliver (’03) : The Ovules of the older Gymnosperms. Ann. of Bot., vol. xvii. 
