structure of the female flower. But in Cycadeæ, at least, and especially in Zamia, the resemblance between the male and female spadices is so great, that if the female be analogous to an ovarium, the partial male spadix must be considered as a single anthera, producing on its surface either naked grains of pollen, or pollen subdivided into masses, each furnished with its proper membrane.
Both these views may at present, perhaps, appear equally paradoxical; yet the former was entertained by Linnaeus, who expresses himself on the subject in the following terms, "Pulvis floridus in Cycade minime pro Antheris agnoscendus est sed pro nudo polline, quod unusquisque qui un- [562 quam pollen antherarum in plantis examinavit fatebitur."[1] That this opinion, so confidently held by Linnaeus, was never adopted by any other botanist, seems in part to have arisen from his having extended it to dorsiferous Ferns. Limited to Cycadeæ, however, it does not appear to me so very improbable as to deserve to be rejected without examination. It receives, at least, some support from the separation, in several cases, especially in the American Zamiæ, of the grains into two distinct, and sometimes nearly marginal, masses, representing, as it may be supposed, the lobes of an anthera; and also from their approximation in definite numbers, generally in fours, analogous to the quaternary union of the grains of pollen, not unfrequent in the antheræ of several other families of plants. The great size of the supposed grains of pollen, with the thickening and regular bursting of their membrane, may be said to be circumstances obviously connected with their production and persistence on the surface of an anthera, distant from the female flower; and with this economy, a corresponding enlargement of the contained particles or fovilla might also be expected. On examining these particles, however, I find them not only equal in size to the grains of pollen of many antheræ, but being elliptical and marked on one side with a longitudinal furrow, they have that form which is one of the most common in the simple pollen of phænogamous plants. To suppose, therefore, merely on the grounds already stated,
- ↑ Mém. de l'Acad. des Scien. de Paris, 1775, p. 518.
