This e It on-, Dyer. — • Morphological Notes . 549 
look a long time without seeing the foliar homology. The 
peltate extremity of the carpophyll offers a flat expansion, 
hollowed out in the centre by a shallow rhomboidal excava- 
tion. It is only by a comparative study that the meaning and 
origin of this becomes intelligible. 
In Fig. 1 it will be observed that one of the carpophylls 
has been replaced by, or, if you like, has grown out into 
a leaf, a, reduced in size yet presenting all the essential 
characters of a normal leaf of the species. At b other carpo- 
phylls have grown out and taken a foliaceous habit : these 
are, however, so generalized and reduced that without the 
help of the more fully developed leaf, their equivalence would 
be scarcely intelligible. This much is clear : the solid ex- 
panded peltate carpophyll is nothing more than a transformed 
foliage leaf, and capable of being replaced by it. 
Now to digress a moment. The carpophylls of E. villosus 
— which is the representative of a small section of the genus 
confined to eastern tropical Africa from Natal northwards — 
have the upper margin of the rhomboidal peltate surface pro- 
longed and bent over and downwards, terminating in a toothed 
edge. A study of the drawing of Herr Wendland’s interesting 
specimen must, I think, lead to the conviction that the teeth 
correspond to the laciniae of the imperfectly foliaceous carpo- 
phylls, and so lead up to the fully developed pinnate leaf. 
The teeth, then, are the ultimate reductions of pinnae. 
It will, however, be noticed that the foliage leaf ends 
abruptly, and that its apex is atrophied. The rhachis is more 
or less four-angled, and the terminal cicatrix is therefore 
obtusely rhomboidal. At c it will be seen that would-be 
foliaceous carpophylls have been arrested in their develop- 
ment and have atrophied truncated extremities. 
If we now pass to Figs. 2-5, which are copied accurately by 
Mr. G. T. G william from a life-sized photograph of the female 
cone of E. longifolius , we can hardly fail to see that the fully 
developed cicatrix is gradually developed from the atrophied 
apex of the carpophyll. The figures are taken at successive 
levels from the top downwards : Figs. 2-4 are sterile carpo- 
002 
