r 48 The “ Origin of Gymnosperins .” 
the other. But it was one thing to admit freely that a very old 
character which had been mainly seen in one branch might, so 
to say, be carried a very long way along the stream of the other, 
and might eventually appear in an offshoot of that other, and 
quite another thing to suppose that a member of the one branch 
was derived from a member of the other. He repudiated entirely 
the origin of Araucarieae or of any known Gymnosperms, from 
Lycopods. Altogether, the more he scrutinized that proposal, the 
less conviction it carried. 
Mr. A. C. Seward (Cambridge) said that at that late hour 
he rose, in rather a battered condition, to reply to many 
remarks and some arguments. Professor Weiss had rather 
exaggerated his (the speaker’s) position. All he had ventured to 
do was to bring forward arguments in support of a theory which 
was not, of course, his own, but had been well-known for many 
years. The result of the discussion had been that he still held the 
views at which he had arrived quite as strongly as he had done 
seven weeks before. The question at issue had, he thought, been 
somewhat obscured by some remarks of Dr. Scott. He had 
previously emphasised the fact that he was dealing not with the 
Conifers as a whole but with the Araucariese alone. He did not 
say anything about the Taxaceae, or about Ginkgo, being derived 
from Lycopods. He did not consider Ginkgo a Conifer at all, but 
would place it, as had recently been done, in a class by itself. Too 
much stress had, in his opinion, been laid on such a relatively minor 
point as the form of pitting of the tracheids as shewing relationship 
between Araucaria and Cordaites. Professor Weiss had stated that 
it was easy to derive the megasporangium of Araucaria from that of 
Cordaites. He could only say that he did not find it so, but thought 
the derivation from Lepidodendron or Spencerites much easier. With 
regard to the Abietineae he ventured to think that if it had not 
been for the abundant crop of monstrosities produced by that family 
far less would have been heard of the “axillary shoot” theory of the 
ovule from Celakovsky and Mr. Worsdell. He thought it probable 
that Abietineae might be related to Araucarieae. With regard to the 
remarks of Miss Thomas about the seedling structure, it was very 
difficult to know exactly what weight should be attached to such 
evidence in phylogenetic questions, but he had no doubt that in the 
whole discussion too great stress had been laid on vegetative, and 
too little on reproductive organs. The discussion had well served 
its purpose, because it had enabled them to get a somewhat clearer 
idea of the questions at issue. 
The President in closing the discussion remarked that the 
10.15 original speakers were evidently all “of the same opinion 
still ” at the end of the debate, and non-experts had had 
their ideas thrown into a good deal of confusion. The only 
contribution he could make to the question was to suggest that 
zoologists generally found it a safe guide when considering the 
phylogeny of groups of animals to attach the greatest importance 
to those characters which were of the least importance to the animal 
in its every day life. 
[The Meeting was then adjourned .] 
R. .\Jadlev. Printer, 151, Whitfield Street, Fitzroy Square, W. 
