Abstract
THE concluding sentence in your note on Mr. H. E. H. Smedley's admirable models of the fructifications of Palæozoic plants (NATURE, December 22, p. 183) may possibly be misleading to some of your readers. As the models of Lepidocarpon shown in your figure were prepared from my instructions, I may be supposed to share the responsibility for the hypothesis of an affinity between the lycopodiaceous cones and the Gymnosperms, stated to have been urged by “the author,” especially as the points of agreement mentioned are quoted, with some slight abridgment, from my paper on the seed-like fructification of Lepidocarpon in the Philosophical Transactions.1 Such an affinity has never appeared to me to be probable. The characters cited—the presence of an integument and micropyle, the single functional megaspore, and the detachment of the indehiscent, seed-like organ as a whole—are important points of analogy with true seeds, but in Lepidocarpon “these organs differ too much in detail from the seeds of Gymnosperms to afford any evidence of affinity.“1 I doubt whether my friend Mr. Smedley really intended to suggest anything more than an analogy.
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