seeds had ceased to swell, apparently from their earliest formation, they adhered together to something like a central placenta: in all the other capsules I found them loose, and suspect the placenta had been absorbed by the liquid remaining in the capsule. A very minute hilum remained always visible, and the three-radiated mark originating there appears to me to be only three stronger ribs of the reticulated cuticle of the seed.
The germination of this plant approaches much nearer to that of Dicotyledones than to that of Monocotyledones, especially if that part which Brotero calls vitellus be considered a radicle. I am, however, inclined to think that it is true albumen, though it does adhere to the embryo; and till we can succeed in getting plenty of perfect seeds, or to catch them in a still earlier stage of germination than the first figure I now send you represents, this point will remain dubious.
In the mean while, a comparison of the seeds of this Lycopodium with those of Isoetes and Pilularia, which they exactly resemble, will assist us; and as Brotero says that he has seen the part he describes for stigma "liquore unctuoso diutissime perfusum," I have little hesitation in believing that it is so: before I read his account, I took the suture at the top, where the capsule afterwards splits, for the stigma, and it is not very unlike the stigma of Stylidium.
I remain, &c.
R. A. Salisbury.18, Queen-Street, Edgeware-Road,
June 3, 1817.
