64 WorsdelL—The Structure of the 
on the examination of normal relations. Without those 
abnormalities, no one would have thought of regarding the 
seminiferous scale of the Abietineae as a composite organ, 
and we should then have been spared, or at least partially so, 
the complicated theories which have for so long obscured the 
understanding of the floral structure of one of the most 
important groups of plants/ Whether or not this is a sound 
and safe position to take up, will be seen when the most 
recent view of this matter is brought forward. However, both 
the developmental and the anatomical evidence favour it. 
Velenovsky (101), in 1888, described an interesting case of 
an abnormal Larch-cone. One axillary bud bore ovules on the 
lower surface of all its leaves. When the bud is suppressed, 
the two seminiferous scales orientate themselves with regard to 
the axis of the cone. In some tropical climbing Aristolochias, 
the first bract of a suppressed bud, which it covers over when 
young, at length increases in size and becomes orientated with 
regard to the stem which it clasps as an ochrea. The same 
thing was observed to occur in Tilia grandifolia , where the 
bud in the axil of the flower-bract was suppressed, so that 
the bract was orientated with regard to the axis in the same 
plane as the subtending bract, and with its upper surface 
directed to the latter. The double scale of a cone of 
Abietineae is a kind of brachyblast, and is the same morpho¬ 
logical phenomenon as occurs in Sciadopitys, so that it is 
nothing new for this type of plant. His concluding remarks 
are worthy of special notice:—‘ The deformed cones of our 
Larix and also the Spruce-cones of Caspary, Stenzel, Will- 
komm, and Celakovsky, are not monstrosities in which certain 
parts are irregularly and haphazardly developed. We find in 
all stages of the scale-metamorphosis a definite law and the 
greatest regularity of development, so that, by retaining a 
right grasp of the process of development, we can a priori 
expect and, as a matter of fact, shall find, the distinct develop¬ 
mental forms. Such a regularity, which occurs in every normal 
flower, can never be an equivocal, pathological and casual 
phenomenon/ 
