Page:Miscellaneousbot01brow.djvu/479

 Rh on each squama, as Agathis and Araucaria, where their number is considerable and apparently indefinite, and more particularly still in Cunninghamia, or Belis, in which the lobes, though only three in number, agree in this respect, as well as in insertion and direction, with the ovula. The supposition, that in such cases all the lobes of each squama are cells of one and the same anthera, receives but little support either from the origin and arrangement of the lobes themselves, or from the structure of other phænogamous plants: the only cases of apparent, though doubtful, analogy that I can at present recollect occurring in Aphyteia, and perhaps in some Cucurbitaceæ.

That part of my subject, therefore, which relates to the analogy between the male and female flowers in Cycadeæ and Coniferæ, I consider the least satisfactory, both in regard to the immediate question of the existence of an anomalous ovarium in these families, and to the hypothesis repeatedly referred to, of the origin of the sexual organs of all phænogamous plants.

In concluding this digression, I have to express my regret that it should have so far exceeded the limits [ 565 proper for its introduction into the present work. In giving an account, however, of the genus of plants to which it is annexed, I had to describe a structure, of whose nature and importance it was necessary I should show myself aware; and circumstances have occurred while I was engaged in preparing this account, which determined me to enter much more fully into the subject than I had originally intended.