Id.loc.

cit.) The plurality of embryos sometimes occurring in Coniferae, and which, in Cycadeae, seems even to be the natural structure, may also, perhaps, be supposed to form an objection to the present opinion, though to me it appears rather an argument in its favour.
Upon the whole, the objections to which the view here taken 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.