(Footnote.  Linnean Society Transactions volume 13 page 211.)

Were I to adopt the former supposition, or that best agreeing with the hypothesis in question, I should certainly apply it, in the first place, to Cycas, in which the female spadix bears so striking a resemblance to a partially altered frond or leaf, producing marginal ovula in one part, and in another being divided into segments, in some cases nearly resembling those of the ordinary frond.

But the analogy of the female spadix of Cycas to that of Zamia is sufficiently obvious; and from the spadix of Zamia to the fruit-bearing squama of Coniferae, strictly so called, namely, of Agathis or Dammara, Cunninghamia, Pinus, and even Araucaria, the transition is not difficult.  This view is applicable, though less manifestly, also to Cupressinae; and might even be extended to Podocarpus and Dacrydium.  But the structure of these two genera admits likewise of another explanation, to which I have already adverted.

If, however, the ovula in Cycadeae and Coniferae be really produced on the surface of an ovarium, it might, perhaps, though not necessarily, be expected that their male flowers should differ from those of all other phaenogamous plants, and in this difference exhibit some analogy to the structure of the female flower.  But in Cycadeae, at least, and especially in Zamia, the resemblance between the male and female spadices is so great, that if the female be analogous to an ovarium, the partial male spadix must be considered as a single anthera, producing on its surface either naked grains of pollen, or pollen subdivided into masses, each furnished with its proper membrane.

Both these views may at present, perhaps, appear equally paradoxical; yet the former was entertained by Linnaeus, who expresses himself on the subject in the following terms, Pulvis floridus in Cycade minime pro Antheris agnoscendus est sed pro nudo polline, quod unusquisque qui unquam pollen antherarum in plantis examinavit fatebitur.* That this opinion, so confidently held by Linnaeus, was never adopted by any other botanist, seems in part to have arisen from his having extended it to dorsiferous Ferns.  Limited to Cycadeae, however, it does not appear to me so very improbable, as to deserve to be rejected without examination.  It receives, at least, some support from the separation, in several cases, especially in the American Zamiae, of the grains into two distinct, and sometimes nearly marginal, masses, representing, as it may be supposed, the lobes of an anthera; and also from their approximation in definite numbers, generally in fours, analogous to the quaternary union of the grains of pollen, not unfrequent in the antherae of several other families of plants.  The great size of the supposed grains of pollen, with the thickening and regular bursting of their membrane, may be said to be circumstances obviously connected with their production and persistence