of the
structure of these two families is still liable, seem to me, as far as I
am aware of them, much less important than those that may be brought
against the other opinions that have been advanced, and still divide
botanists on this subject.

According to the earliest of these opinions, the female flower of
Cycadeae and Coniferae is a monospermous pistillum, having no proper
floral envelope.

To this structure, however, Pinus itself was long considered by many
botanists as presenting an exception.

Linnaeus has expressed himself so obscurely in the natural character
which he has given of this genus, that I find it difficult to determine
what his opinion of its structure really was. I am inclined, however, to
believe it to have been much nearer the truth than is generally supposed;
judging of it from a comparison of his essential with his artificial
generic character, and from an observation recorded in his Praelectiones,
published by Giseke.*

(*Footnote. Praelect. in Ord. Nat. page 589.)

But the first clear account that I have met with, of the real structure
of Pinus, as far as regards the direction, or base and apex of the female
flowers, is given, in 1767, by Trew, who describes them in the following
manner: "Singula semina vel potius germina stigmati tanquam organo
feminino gaudent,"* and his figure of the female flower of the Larch, in
which the stigmata project beyond the base of the scale, removes all
doubt respecting his meaning.

(*Footnote. Nov. Act. Acad. Nat. Curios. 3 page 453 table 13 figure 23.)

In 1789, M. de Jussieu, in the character of his genus Abies,* gives a
similar account of structure, though somewhat less clearly as well as
less decidedly expressed. In the observations that follow, he suggests,
as not improbable, a very different view, founded on the supposed analogy
with Araucaria, whose structure was then misunderstood; namely, that the
inner scale of the female amentum is a bilocular ovarium, of which the
outer scale is the style. But this, according to Sir James Smith,** was
also Linnaeus' opinion; and it is the view adopted in Mr. Lambert's
splendid monograph of the genus published in 1803.

(*Footnote. Gen. Pl. page 414.)

(**Footnote. Rees Cyclop. art. Pinus.)

In the same year in which Mr. Lambert's work appeared, Schkuhr*
describes, and very distinctly figures, the female flower of Pinus,
exactly as it was understood by Trew, whose opinion was probably unknown
to him.