59 
Female ‘ Flower' in Coniferae. 
appendages of the cones of Coniferae may vary as regards 
their morphological significance,’ so that the ovules may be 
inserted either on a leaf or a shoot. These strange branches 
he compares to the ‘ cladophylls ’ of Lycopodium , as in 
L. Selago . He rises superior to the difficulty of branches 
arising on the stem in place of leaves by assuming that 
the leaf belongs both to the stem and to the branch in its axil 
For the axillary branch is part of the same organ as the 
leaf. He regards the ovule and pistil as being both of axial 
nature. The seminiferous scale, although a modified branch, 
is nevertheless the representative of the ‘ carpellary involucre ’ 
of other plants. He believes that Conifers, like Cycads and 
Gnetaceae, are Gymnosperms. All this appears to me, how¬ 
ever, a rather irrational view of the whole matter. 
The theory which to-day receives, perhaps, as much support 
from botanists as any other is that first put forward by 
Sachs, as we have seen, in 1868, and afterwards in 1881-2 
more elaborately worked up and more definitely stated by 
Eichler (71, 91, 95). This theory maintains that there is 
but one scale, and no double scale, in Coniferae, representing 
a carpel or sporophyll bearing an ovule or ovules on its 
upper surface or on its axil; and that the so-called semi¬ 
niferous scale is in all cases of the nature of a ventral outgrowth 
of the scale, representing a placenta or ligule, and therefore 
forming an integral part of the scale (Fig. 2). 
In Dammar a the bundle given off to the ovule is nothing 
more than an ordinary bundle leaving the carpel for the ovule : 
it is absent in the sterile scales, a fact which seems to show 
the absence of an inner scale. As regards the inverted orien¬ 
tation of the bundle going off to the ovule, he says: c In all 
cases, where a leaf forms superficial products, which have to 
be provided with bundles, these last twist their elements 
round.’ He compares other outgrowths of leaves, especially 
the fertile spike of Ophioglossum , with the ovule of Dammara ; 
in all such cases the parts of the bundle are inverted. The 
scale is a single leaf and its appendage an ovule. It cannot 
be an ovary as Baillon, Parlatore, Dickson, and Sperk say, 
