tanists have maintained,
of late, on other grounds. (See especially Ethel Sargant, "The
Reconstruction of a Race of Primitive Angiosperms", "Annals of Botany",
Vol. XXII. page 121, 1908.) So far, however, as the palaeontological
record shows, the Monocotyledons were little if at all later in their
appearance than the Dicotyledons, though always subordinate in numbers.
The typical and beautifully preserved Palm-wood from Cretaceous rocks
is striking evidence of the early evolution of a characteristic
monocotyledonous family. It must be admitted that the whole question of
the evolution of Monocotyledons remains to be solved.

Accepting, provisionally, the theory of the cycadophytic origin of
Angiosperms, it is interesting to see to what further conclusions we
are led. The Bennettiteae, at any rate, were still at the gymnospermous
level as regards their pollination, for the exposed micropyles of the
ovules were in a position to receive the pollen directly, without the
intervention of a stigma. It is thus indicated that the Angiosperms
sprang from a gymnospermous source, and that the two great phyla of
Seed-plants have not been distinct from the first, though no doubt the
great majority of known Gymnosperms, especially the Coniferae, represent
branch-lines of their own.

The stamens of the Bennettiteae are arranged precisely as in an
angiospermous flower, but in form and structure they are like the
fertile fronds of a Fern, in fact the compound pollen-sacs, or synangia
as they are technically called, almost exactly agree with the spore-sacs
of a particular family of Ferns--the Marattiaceae, a limited group,
now mainly tropical, which was probably more prominent in the later
Palaeozoic times than at present. The scaly hairs, or ramenta, which
clothe every part of the plant, are also like those of Ferns.

It is not likely that the characters in which the Bennettiteae resemble
the Ferns came to them directly from ancestors belonging to that class;
an extensive group of Seed-plants, the Pteridospermeae, existed in
Palaeozoic times and bear evident marks of affinity with the Fern
phylum. The fern-like characters so remarkably persistent in the highly
organised Cycadophyta of the Mesozoic were in all likelihood derived
through the Pteridosperms, plants which show an unmistakable approach to
the cycadophytic type.

The family Bennettiteae thus presents an extraordinary association
of characters, exhibiting, side by side, featu