55 
Female i Flower ’ in Coniferae . 
formation of a style and stigma in some Coniferae can only 
point to the presence of an ovary. (6) Several anomalous 
structures exhibit the foliar nature of the ovary. (7) The 
structure, form, and development of the ovary are repeated 
in the Loranthaceae, Amentaceae, &c. (8) The idea of 
R. Brown and others that the scale surrounding the flowers 
is an open carpel, is refuted by all my observations and 
investigations.’ 
Sperk does not himself attempt, however, to give any 
explanation of the seminiferous scale. 
In the Botanische Zeitung for 1871, Von Mohl (6 9) first 
gave to the world his very interesting and important dis¬ 
covery concerning the f double needle’ of the Umbrella Pine, 
Sciadopitys verticillata. He showed that its origin was the 
same precisely as that of the. seminiferous scale of the 
Abietineae, viz. from the two first leaves of a secondary 
axillary shoot, which have become fused by their inner or 
posterior margins ; as a result of which the ventral surface 
of the organ is directed outwards (Figs. 1 and 3). The small 
axillary shoots or brachyblasts of the female cone of Abie¬ 
tineae and those of the vegetative shoot of Sciadopitys } 
abnormal in the one, but normal in the other, are therefore 
homologous structures, and, by the aid of the former abnor¬ 
mality, the eccentric orientation and structure of the ‘ double 
needle ’ is readily explained, though it required the acute 
insight of a Von Mohl to solve the riddle. 
Strasburger’s (70 and 85 a ) view of the matter, expressed 
in his renowned work on the Coniferae and Gnetaceae, in 
1872, is sufficiently original, not to say, at least for some 
of us, bizarre, and approaches more nearly to the views held 
by Baillon and by Schleiden, than to those of any other 
botanists. In the first place he maintains the ovarian theory 
of the ovule, a view which he afterwards abandoned in favour 
of Gymnospermy in his later book on Angiosperms and 
Gymnosperms. But the view as to the nature of the semi¬ 
niferous scale knew with him no variation, at least in essentials, 
from beginning to end. He held this organ in the Abietineae 
