30 DR. J. D. HOOKER ON WELWITSCHIA. 
tend to show thay it is compound. The ovule, on the other hand, up to this period of 
growth, shows no further traces of composition than the double vascular System which 
I believe that, in respect of this anomalous disposition of vascular cords at the base of 
the ovary, Welwitschia presents but a slight deviation from the arrangement which 
obtains in other Gnetacee, of which Ephedra has three corresponding bundles, and 
Gnetum many ; but it presents a remarkable contrast to what occurs in Conifere, and, 
in connexion with the other peculiarities of the ovule, and with the relations of the 
flower to the scale, it renders it impossible to reduce the inflorescence of the three genera 
(Ephedra, Gnetum, and Welwitschia) to the same type with that of Conifers as generally 
understood. 
Assuming Brown’s view of the ovule of Conifers, and mine of that of Gnetacee, to be 
correct, that each presents a nucleus with one or more integuments which are not of 
carpellary origin, we have, then, in biovulate Conifere two ovules lying on an open scale, 
regarded by most as carpellary, but by some as ramal, and this again subtended by 
another scale, which is regarded as bracteal. The obvious mode of harmonizing the 
relations of these organs is, to regard the ovuliferous scale of Conifere as not carpel- 
lary, but perigonial, or the perianth of Gnetacee as carpellary. It would be out of 
place to discuss here the first proposition, because (though by no means proven) the 
i i ovuliferous 
sented by a uniovular carpel, and that, for comparison with We 
resort to the uniovulate Conifere, such as Araucaria, Dacrydium, Podocarpus, &¢., the 
correspondence of whose scales with those of Abietinee, &e., is not in all cases 
ascertained, : 
There is nothing in the development of this ovule that favours the opposite theory, 
in gymnospermous plants is of carpellary origin, 
‘ing ; : ymnosperms; like these, and unlike carpel- 
lary organs, it is entirely devoid of vascular tissue in its 
* Caspary “On the Morphology of the female Flower of the 
p- 19. Parlatore (Ann, Sc. Nat. sér. 4. xvi, P- 215) considers 
or bracteoles more or less confluent together and 
Abietinez ; translated in Nat. Hist. Review, 1862, 
the scale to be a shortened branch, having its leaves 
with the bract and the pistil (ovule), Se 
