Further Observations on the Fossil Flower, 
Cretovarium. 
BY 
MARIE C. STOPES, D.Sc., Ph.D., F.L.S. 
Lecturer in Fossil Botany, Manchester University. 
With Plates LVI and LVII. 
ECT of the paper: To record the discovery of, and shortly to 
describe, ovules in an ovary of Cretovarium japonicum , Stopes and 
Fujii ; and to illustrate the structure of the ovary wall. 
Although the original description 1 * 3 is based on seven specimens of the 
ovary of Cretovarium , one of them showing the placentae, none of these 
contained any ovules. 
I have recently found an ovary containing several ovules, and now 
describe it in order to supplement the earlier account of the new fossil— 
which has for the moment added to its merely academic a somewhat 
adventitious interest, owing to the fact that it is the only known structural 
petrifaction of a true angiospermic flower. 
The ovary containing the ovules is shown in Photograph i, PL LVI, 
in transverse section. It is from a region apparently slightly above the 
equator of the carpels, where it is free from the perianth. (It will be remem¬ 
bered that the perianth is adherent to the lower region of the carpels.) 
In the specimen, the cavities of the loculi are completely filled with 
black granules of matrix, in which the ovules stand out as shadowy, lighter 
patches in the photograph. The diagram in PI. LVII, Fig. i, gives an out¬ 
line of the same, and shows the position and extent of the ovules, of which 
there are so many as five in the complete loculus. 
The petrifaction of the ovules is, unfortunately, far from perfect, but 
they closely resemble in appearance ovules in preparations of modern 
plants which have not been well fixed. The enlarged drawing in Fig. 3, 
PI. LVII, shows the details of the ovules numbered 2, 3, and 4 in Fig. 1. 
From this it will be seen that but little definite cell structure is retained, 
1 Stopes and Fujii, Studies on the Structure and Affinities of Cretaceous Plants. Phil. Trans. 
Royal Soc. B., vol. cc, 1910. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXIV. No. XCVI. October, 1910.] , 
3 A 2 
