that these particles are analogous to the fovilla, and the containing organs to the grains of pollen in antheræ of the usual structure, would be entirely gratuitous. It is, at the same time, deserving of remark, that were this view 563] adopted on more satisfactory grounds, a corresponding development might then be said to exist in the essential parts of the male and female organs. The increased development in the ovulum would not consist so much in the unusual form and thickening of the coat, a part of secondary importance, and whose nature is disputed, as in the state of the nucleus of the seed, respecting which there is no difference of opinion; and where the plurality of embryos, or at least the existence and regular arrangement of the cells in which they are formed, is the uniform structure in the family.
The second view suggested, in which the anthera in Cycadeæ is considered as producing on its surface an indefinite number of pollen masses, each enclosed in its proper membrane, would derive its only support from a few remote analogies; as from those antheræ, whose loculi are subdivided into a definite, or more rarely an indefinite, number of cells, and especially from the structure of the stamina of Viscum album.
I may remark, that the opinion of M. Richard,[1] who considers these grains, or masses, as unilocular antheræ, each of which constitutes a male flower, seems to be attended with nearly equal difficulties.
The analogy between the male and female organs in Coniferæ, the existence of an open ovarium being assumed, is at first sight more apparent than in Cycadeæ. In Coniferæ, however, the pollen is certainly not naked, but is enclosed in a membrane similar to the lobe of an ordinary anthera. And in those genera in which each squama of the amentum produces two marginal lobes only, as Pinus, Podocarpus, Dacrydium, Salisburia, and Phyllocladus, it nearly resembles the more general form of the antheræ 564] in other Phænogamous plants. But the difficulty occurs in those genera which have an increased number of lobes
- ↑ Dict. Class. d'Hist. Nat. tom. v. p. 216.
