368 Mr. R. Brown on the Plurality and Development but the bill, in addition to the feature pointed out above, is of a more slender and attenuated form than is observable in any other. XLIV. — On the Plurality and Development of the Embryos in the Seeds of Coniferse. By Robert Brown, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S., and Foreign Member of the Academy of Sciences in the Institute of France*. [With a Plate.] The following short paper on a subject which I intend to treat at greater length, contains a few facts of sufficient interest perhaps to admit of its being received as a communication to the present meeting. In my observations on the structure of the female flower in Cycadece and Conifer ce, published in 1826t, I endeavoured to prove that in these two families of plants the ovulum was in no stage inclosed in an ovarium, but was exposed directly to the action of the pollen. In support of this opinion, which has since been generally, though I believe not universally adopted, the exact resemblance between the organ until then termed ovarium in these two fami-lies, and the ovulum in other phsenogamous plants, was particu-larly insisted on ; and I at the same time referred, though with less confidence, to their agreement in the more important changes consequent to fecundation. I noticed also the singular fact of the constant plurality of embryos in the impregnated ovula of Cycadece^ and the not un-frequent occurrence of a similar structure in Coniferce. In con-tinuing this investigation, in the course of the same summer in which the essay referred to appeared, it seemed probable, from the examination of several species of the Linnsean genus Pinus, namely, Pinus Abies, Strobus and Larix, that the plurality and regular arrangement of embryos were as constant in Coniferce as in Cycadea ; for in all the species of Pinus here referred to, the preparation for the production of several embryos was equally manifest, and the points or areolae of production were in like manner disposed in a single circular series at the upper extremity of the amnios. From these observations, which I have since confirmed in the same and also in other species of Pinus, an additional and im-portant point of resemblance is established between Cycadece and * Read before the British Association at Edinburgh in August 1834, and published in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles for October 1813. f In the Appendix to Capt. King's Voyage
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