appears to be of greater importance as connected with fecundation, than as affording protection to the nucleus at a more advanced period. For in many cases, before impregnation, its perforated apex projects beyond the aperture of the testa, and in some plants puts on the appearance of an obtuse, or even dilated stigma; while in the ripe seed it is often either entirely obliterated, or exists only as a thin film, which might readily be mistaken for the epidermis of a third membrane then frequently observable.
This third coat is formed by the proper membrane or cuticle of the Nucleus, from whose substance in the unimpregnated ovulum it is never, I believe, separable, and at that period is very rarely visible. In the ripe seed it is distinguishable from the inner membrane only by its apex, which is never perforated, is generally acute and more deeply coloured, or even sphacelated.
The membrane of the nucleus usually constitutes the innermost coat of the seed. But in a few plants an additional coat, apparently originating in the inner membrane of Grew, the vesicula colliquamenti or amnios of Malpighi, also exists.
In general the Amnios, after fecundation, gradually enlarges, till at length it displaces or absorbs the whole substance of the nucleus, containing in the ripe seed both the embryo and albumen, where the latter continues to exist. In such cases, however, its proper membrane is commonly [553 obliterated, and its place supplied either by that of the nucleus, by the inner membrane of the ovulum, or, where both these are evanescent, by the testa itself.
In other cases the albumen is formed by a deposition of granular matter in the cells of the nucleus. In some of these cases the membrane of the amnios seems to be persistent, forming even in the ripe seed a proper coat for the embryo, the original attachment of whose radicle to the apex of this coat may also continue. This, at least, seems to me the most probable explanation of the structure of true Nymphæaceae, namely, Nuphar, Nymphæa, Euryale, Hydropeltis, and Cabomba, notwithstanding their very re-
