40 Worsdell .— The S'truehere of the 
In the following pages I shall only consider the most im¬ 
portant and striking of the many views advanced by those 
authors who have expressed them in the most elaborate 
and authoritative manner. At the end, however, will be 
found a bibliography of the subject as complete as I have 
been able to compile, which, in any case, will be amply 
sufficient to afford information regarding the history of the 
whole subject. 
The male reproductive organs of Coniferae are compara¬ 
tively simple in structure and morphology, strangely unlike, 
in these respects, those of the opposite sex. But a comparison 
between the two cannot be instituted until some attempt 
has been made to unravel the structure and morphology of 
the female ‘ flowers.’ 
These organs are, in different genera, greatly dissimilar as 
regards their superficial aspect, a fact which renders all the 
more obscure their real nature and - relationships. We have 
only to think of the female parts of the Pine, Cypress, 
Juniper, and Yew, in order to become impressed with this 
fact. As the various genera of the order Coniferae are 
manifestly more intimately allied the one to the other than 
any one of them is either to the Gnetaceae or the Cycads, 
it is obvious that it would be useless to investigate the 
structure and morphological nature of any one of these genera 
independently of all the rest; they must, on the contrary, be 
all considered, in this respect, interdependently, by direct 
comparative study of their respective parts, if we are to 
arrive at any worthy conclusion as to their real significance. 
The nature of the cone of an Abies cannot be considered 
along these lines apart from the f berry’ of a Yew or a 
Juniper, for parts which are obscure in their meaning in the 
one form are often rendered intelligible by their more easily 
explicable counterpart in the other, with regard to the 
relative positions of parts or organs, their mode of develop¬ 
ment, &c. For a full attempt at a solution of the problem 
it would also be requisite to institute a comparison of the 
Coniferae, both individually and as a whole, with the allied 
