184 The Meeting of the British Association at York. 
logical investigation would lose much of its interest, because it could 
not be connected with the Pteridophytes. 
Professor Jeffrey said that this particular subject was rather 
out of his region. But the descent of the authors into “ the root of 
the matter” was well advised. He was sure that an investigation 
of the cotyledons and hypocotyl was important, and this he said 
with the more confidence because of his own recent work on 
cretaceous fossils. 
Miss Sargant said that she found herself in the somewhat 
unusual position of agreeing with nearly everything that had 
been said, except perhaps one thing. She had always been 
accustomed to consider the herbaceous type as more primitive 
because it was more plastic. 
Mr. T. G. Hill had always considered that the single bundle of 
each cotyledon dividing into two in order to make the transition 
was primitive, and for the present he held to that view. One 
naturally expected to find this if one accepted the homology with 
Pteridophytes. 
Miss Thomas combated Mr. Hill’s views and supplemented Mr. 
Tansley’sexposition in several respects, laying particular stress on the 
elasticity of the loose Cycad type which would permit of evolution in 
more than one direction, compared with the rigidity of the “ tight ” 
dicotyledonous type. Whatever the factors might be that had led 
to the evolution of the latter it was quite in accordance with 
morphological experience that some advanced plants should have 
escaped their influence. She congratulated Mr. Hill on his elegant 
demonstration of the relations of the “ polycotyledonous ” to the 
“ dicotyledonous ” type in Conifers, with which from her own 
experience she entirely concurred. 
Mr. Tansley, in replying, also congratulated Mr. Hill on his 
Conifer work and confessed that he had at one time held the same 
view of the primitiveness of the unifascicular cotyledon trace and 
diarch root, but had been forced by the pressure of evidence to 
abandon it, so far at least as the Spermophytes proper were con¬ 
cerned. If you could derive the Gymnosperms straight from 
modern Ferns there would be much to be said for such a view. 
But recent work had demonstrated the great series of Pteridosperms 
as intermediate, and they were much more likely to agree with the 
Cycads. How the complex Cycad type originated was, at present, 
entirely mysterious. 
Mr. A. W. Hill, whose paper on “The Seedlings of certain 
