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F. W. Oliver . 
verge on the gratuitous. Regarded as a flower, we see in it a 
remarkable combination of primitive and advanced characters. The 
microsporophylls of Cycadeoidea if combined in one plant with the 
seed-scales of Cycas would give us all the essentials of a quite 
generalised Pteridosperm. But the Filicinean affinities are so 
evident as hardly to need further emphasis. 
The great interest to many, and among them the present writer, 
will be the significance of this hermaphrodite flower from an Angio- 
spermous point of view. Does its existence tend to bring Angio- 
sperms into the Fern-Pteridosperm-Cycad line ? The flower is 
admittedly a gymnosperm in that pollination is direct, but one’s 
faith in the old shibboleths has in these days received many shocks. 
As a feature of taxonomic importance the existence of secondary 
thickening has lost all its former significance. The possession of 
seeds, again, is readily admitted to be no mark of affinity. Is it 
possible that Angiospermy and Gymnospermy as differential cri¬ 
teria of affinity will have to go too? 
Whatever else one may think of this flower it cannot be 
regarded as that of a quite typical Angiosperm, although Wieland 
has compared it appropriately enough with the flower of a Magno- 
liaceous plant. 
Its great interest and value seems to be that whilst just 
missing the Angiosperm it shows how close the Cycad line could 
come to realising it. It is indeed the key to the Angiosperms; 
when that is recognised the rest is easy. 
One would be tempted to speak of the two series of Cycado- 
phytes by the names Gymnocycad and Angiocycad respectively, 
were it not for a reasonable confidence that there must be still 
other forms lying hidden in the earth’s crust even better qualified 
than Cycadeoidea to bear the designation Angiocycad. It is 
possible, no doubt, though it seems almost incredible, that a flower 
with perianth, stamens and gynaecgum in proper relative position 
as in Cycadeoidea should have been produced except in a line very 
closely related to that which led to the Angiosperms. 
That the actual difference between Angiosperms and Gymno- 
sperms in the early days was very slight will be realised when some 
of the minor points of structure in Cycadoidea come to be worked 
out in detail. In this connection attention may be drawn to a 
structure which Dr. Wieland conjectures may be the trace of an 
extra-seminal wrapping having its insertion at the distal end of the 
