at the Linnean Society. 73 
Palaeozoic stem, of tree-fern habit, shewing structure, and 
would shew by means of lantern slides its well-known and very 
Marattiaceous anatomy. This was the best evidence that could be 
offered in support of the view that Eusporangiate Ferns existed in 
Palaeozoic times. Some species of Psaronius bore Pecopterid 
fronds with synangia. Nevertheless he was not quite sure that 
Psaronius was really an Eusporangiate fern. It was just possible 
that a principle which we w r ere too apt to lose sight of might 
apply here. Among recent plants what he had called ho moeomorpliy 
was very frequent, as everyone admitted, and it could certainly 
also be detected among fossils. That two plants belonging to two 
quite different lines of descent might have acquired very similar 
morphological features was certainly true. He might refer to 
the Palaeozoic seed plants, Cordaites, which Professor Oliver had 
mentioned. No one would now argue that because the Cordaiteae 
and Pteridosperms both bore seeds a direct connexion existed 
between them. In the Palaeozoic period, forms on more than 
one line of descent had attained to that particular form of 
heterospory which we called a seed, but that fact was no 
evidence of close affinity between the forms in question. It seemed 
possible that the resemblances between the microsporangiate 
synangia of Palaeozoic Pteridosperms and the synangia of modern 
Marattiaceae may also be simply due to parallism of development. 
However that might be, he could find no evidence that in the 
Palaeozoic epoch, Eusporangiate forms had attained a position of 
dominance, whether the Pecopterids bearing synangia were really 
Eusporangiatae or otherwise. Two practical points emerged from 
this discussion. We should use every endeavour to determine the 
precise nature of the Pecopterids of the Palaeozoic rocks, and we 
should pay particular attention to the Botryopterideae and to the 
other families of Primofilices which would probably become 
separated out in the near future. 
Mr. A. C. Seward, rising at 9.30 to speak on the Araucarieae 
and the origin of Conifers, felt there was some danger that evening 
of the different speakers attending too exclusively to their own 
aspects of the subject and neglecting to discuss the views put 
forward by others. He would have liked to criticise some of the 
statements of previous speakers with which he had found himself 
unable to agree, but he had been instructed to confine himself to 
one particular text, which concerned the Conifers. In discussing 
the evolution of Gymnosperms they were mainly concerned with 
the Cycads and Araucarieae. He contended that those who accepted 
the view that Cycads were derived from Ferns had gone too far in 
including the Conifers in the Fern-Cycad alliance. He held the 
view that Conifers, or at least some of them, might have been 
derived from the Lycopods. He would confine himself mainly to 
the Araucarieae, which, while they could not be removed from the 
Conifers, constituted in many respects a group apart. One question 
which had to be asked in considering the phylogeny of such a 
group—was whether the Araucarieae were an old group of 
Coniferae. So far as the evidence was before them the Araucarieae 
were certainly an old group. Probably no group of Conifers 
existing at the present day could trace their descent further back. 
Recently some botanists had stated with a certain dogmatism that 
