279 
the botanist, however, the subject is not so simple. This is illus- 
trated by the following paragraph which occurs in a recent num- 
ber of the School Review: “It is unfortunate from a morphologi- 
cal standpoint that these organs of the Bryophyta should be called 
stems and leaves * * * this terminology being handed down 
from a time when the true homologies of the sporophyte and 
gametophyte parts were not well known.” 
It would seem from this paragraph that, while the ordinary ob- 
server would not hesitate to describe the organs of the moss-plant 
as stem and leaf corresponding to those of higher plants, the mor- 
phologist would give a different interpretation to their meaning, 
and even carry thisso far as to prefer that other names be given them. 
This opinion, expressed by the author of the above paragraph, 
is shared by many morphologists of the present day, and especially 
by one of our leading botanists, Professor Goebel. He says in an 
article published several years ago in the third volume of Schenk’s 
General Botany, in speaking of the development of the higher 
from the lower, from thallus to the stem and leaf. “The attain- 
ment of a higher form in the different plant-groups has taken 
Place in a similar or analogous manner, though it is an independ- 
€nt process in each plant group.’’ He then compares the parts 
or members of Caulerpa, which resemble stem and leaf, with 
similar members in certain forms in the higher groups of plants, 
with certain of the Phaeophyceae, Florideae, and with the liver- 
worts, ferns and phanerogams. Of these again he says, “We can- 
not say that these members are homologous, for example, liver- 
Worts and ferns are undoubtedly nearly related, but the vegetative 
form of the foliose liverwort is not the homologue of the leafy stem > 
of the fern, but of the other generation, which has the form of a 
thallus ; that is, the attainment of a stem and leaf in the asexual 
Seneration of the fern plant may have come about entirely in- 
dependent of any inherited tendency or connection with the liver- 
wort, simply by a series of changes from a thallus up toa stem 
and leaf, just as we have seen in the sexual generation of the liver- 
Wort. Here there is a gradual adaptation of the plant to its sur- 
roundings, till from a thallus form comes finally thatof stem and 
leaf. The endeavor to find out how the different organs or mem- 
bers of the higher plants have originated must not take the start- ] 
