at the Linnean Society. 147 
groups of plants shewed the same organs because they had inherited 
them from common ancestors, and that was why it was possible 
to make plausible false lines of descent. What was mainly wanted 
was to study living plants and to take broad views. He did not 
wholly deprecate the Micawber-like attitude of certain botanists of 
palaeobotanic tendency in hanging round the mouths of coal-pits 
and waiting for something to turn up, but they must in the first 
place study living plants, applying the first principles of morphology 
to the determination of their relationships. They had plenty of 
instances of the persistence of ancient characters side by side with 
derived characters. It was certain that homospory must be older 
than heterospory, for instance, but plenty of homosporous ferns 
still existed, and the same thing occurred in the Equisetum and 
Lycopod groups. The Ophioglossacean were very interesting because 
they combined the characters of the Fern and Lycopod phyla. 
They were the persistent remnants of the generalised types which 
were the common ancestors of the Lycopods and Ferns. Isoetcs 
occupied a somewhat similar position, but had predominantly 
Lycopod characters. The ligute of the Araucarieae was no doubt 
homologous with that of the Lycopods, but that did not mean that 
the one group was necessarily derived from the other. 
Miss E. N. Thomas (London) said that an extended series of 
observations on seedlings had led to the conclusion that the 
arrangement of the vascular system in the cotyledons, hypocotyl and 
primary root would probably, in future, be regarded as of considerable 
taxonomic value. As regarded Gymnosperms there seemed to be a 
Cycadean type derived from the study of seven out of the nine 
genera. In this type there were usually four bundles at the base of 
each cotyledon. A tetrarch root was formed, which generally 
became diarch lower down. This type was also found in Araucaria, 
and outside these groups could only be paralleled in Ginkgo. So 
far as this evidence went, therefore, the vascular structure of the 
seedling confirmed the affinity of Araucaria with Cycads and Ginkgo. 
Professor F. W. Oliver (London), rising at 9.57 to reply, said 
the discussion had followed the course that might have been expected. 
Diversity of view, inevitable in discussing questions of origin, had 
shewn itself and been happily expressed. That Cycads shewed close 
Filicinean relationship was agreed to on all sides, but on the other 
hand Mr. Seward’s view of the Lycopodinean affinities of the 
Araucariere and of other Coniferag too had met with opposition. He 
had been glad to hear Dr. Scott call attention to the fact that Mr. 
Seward had wandered from the Lycopods to Cheirostrobus which 
was a totally different thing. This brought him to the contribution 
of Mr. Worsdell, and he found himself in substantial agreement 
with a great deal, and that the most important part, of 
10.o Mr. Worsdell’s speech. No one supposed that the documents 
on which we relied did not go further back than we could 
trace them, and the probability of the existence of ancient groups 
of which we had no trace came out when we considered, for instance, 
the suggestion of Sphenophyllinean sporophylls contained in the 
male flowers of Cordaites. There was also a resemblance between 
the division of some Cordaitean and some Sphenophyllinean leaves. 
Bearing in mind these facts he need not say how heartily he 
agreed with the general tenor of Mr. Worsdell’s remarks about a 
common group representing the ancestors of the Sphenophyllinean, 
Equisetinean and Lycopodineag on the one side and of the Ferns on 
