242 
W. T. Saxton. 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CONIFERS. 
By W. T. Saxton, M.A., F.L.S., 
Professor of Botany at the Ahtnedabad Institute of Science , India. 
[With One Figure in the Text.] 
1.—Introduction. 
I ^VER since Hofmeister’s classical researches on Conifer 
j gametophytes, published in 1862, an ever increasing number 
of workers has gradually widened our knowledge of this interesting 
group. Strasburger, whose first Conifer work appeared in 1869, 
has been the most indefatigable of these workers, while in recent 
years very many contributions of much more restricted scope have 
appeared, dealing generally with only one genus at a time, and 
working out its life history in greater detail than was possible when 
a wider field was dealt with. One result of this greater speciali¬ 
zation has been that, in elucidating the details of particular genera, 
the bearing of the facts on phylogeny and classification has often 
been lost sight of, although all such work has had as its nominal 
objective the clearing up of relationships, either within the group, 
or between the Conifers and other phyla, or both. 
In spite of the numerous detailed investigations of the last 
twenty years, systematists still use, almost solely, obvious external 
features to delimit the various families within the Coniferales. 
While phylogeny is the ultimate goal in questions of relation¬ 
ship, yet it is impossible to successfully approach the more complex 
phylogenetic problems until some sort of agreement is reached, or 
at least until a satisfactory basis is found, in regard to the less 
complex question of classification. 
The object of the present communication is therefore to discuss 
the relative values of various characters, both obvious and more 
recondite, as indicative of natural relationships ; to apply the results 
to working out a more natural classification of the group; and 
finally to suggest, somewhat tentatively, a scheme of phylogeny on 
the basis of the proposed classification. 
It has long been recognised in the Angiosperms that “habit,” 
which depends chiefly upon the form and arrangement of the stem 
and leaves of a plant, is of extremely little use in arriving at a clear 
idea of natural relationship. If examples were needed to emphasize 
this statement, one might point to the extreme variation within such 
