48 Worsdell .— The Structure of the 
him always a ‘flower.’ In the Taxineae and Podocarpeae the 
‘ aril ’ is composed, in the first case of one, in the second of 
two bracts of the axillary axis, which here become fleshy, and 
are homologues of the seminiferous scale. 
In the same year (1864), 0 rsted (61), a Danish botanist, 
produced a paper in which he describes and figures some 
highly interesting and instructive abnormal cones. He 
mentions three cases of cones, in the lower part of which 
the bracts had the form of foliage leaves, while higher up 
they assumed that of ordinary bracts, in the axil of each of 
which were several scales arranged as on a suppressed shoot, 
the two outermost of which were the largest and placed 
opposite each other. Still higher up, the bract gradually 
became reduced in size, as did the scales in number; but the 
outermost scales gradually increased in size, at the same time 
becoming connate by their margins, while rudimentary ovules 
appeared at the base on their dorsal side. At length the 
bract became reduced to its ordinary minute size, and the 
seminiferous scales fused into a single large broad structure, 
dentate or bifid at the apex. From these facts he draws the 
following conclusions:— 
(1) ‘ The cone arises from the metamorphosis of a shoot, as 
the leafy bracts become changed into the bracts of the cone 
and the buds into seminiferous scales. (2) The seminiferous 
scales arise, like any other flower, by metamorphosis of a bud, 
but only two leaves of the flower are formed, viz. the two 
seminiferous scales which fuse together (Fig. 3). (3) That 
the seminiferous scales in Abietineae are open carpels with 
naked seeds is seen by the fact that this metamorphosis 
agrees entirely with misformed carpels in other plants (e. g. 
Paeonia Moutan). (4) That a leaf may represent a whole 
bud, and as such may be placed in the axil of another leaf’ 
(Fig. 1). In the Larch, a malformation in just the opposite 
direction occurred, in which the cone was normal in structure 
at the base and proliferated at the top, and there resembling 
a vegetative shoot. The seminiferous scale was at the base 
at first quite normal, higher up becoming bifid ; then split 
