198 Morphology and Systematic Botany under [BOOKI. 



in the year 1750, Hedwig especially on the Mosses in 1782 ; 

 these works were followed by Mirbel's thorough examina- 

 tion of Marchantia in 1835, by BischofFs of Marchantieae 

 and Riccieae, by Schimper's study of the Mosses in 1850, 

 and by Lantzius Beninga's 1 contributions to the knowledge 

 of the structure of the moss-capsule in 1847. The organ- 

 isation, and to some extent the germination, of the Vascular 

 Cryptogams had become better known since 1828 through 

 Bischoff's 2 researches; Unger had as early as 1837 described 

 the spermatozoids in the antheridia of various Mosses, Nageli 

 had discovered them on an organ of the Ferns which had up 

 to that time been taken for the cotyledonary leaf of these 

 plants, and on the same part of the plant Suminski in 1848 

 observed the female sexual organs and the entrance of the 

 spermatozoids into them. The history of the germination of 

 the Rhizocarps, from which Schleiden thought that he had 

 proved his erroneous theory of fertilisation with more than 

 usual certainty, had been examined some years before by 

 Nageli, and also by Mettenius, in great detail ; here too 

 Nageli detected the spermatozoids. Thus important fragments 

 of the life and organisation of these plants had been described 

 up to the year 1848, but until they were more fully understood 

 and connected together they had but little scientific value, the 

 one fact perhaps excepted, that fertilisation in the Cryptogams 



Professor of Medicine in Erlangen, and was the first who described the sexual 

 organs in various Liverworts. 



1 Lantzius Beninga, born in East Friesland in 1815, was a professor in Got- 

 tingen, and died in 1871. 



2 Gottlieb Wilhelm Bischoff was born at Diirkheim on the Hardt in 1797, 

 and died as Professor of Botany at Heidelberg in 1854. He wrote various 

 manuals and text-books which are careful and industrious compilations, but 

 being entirely conceived in the spirit of the times preceding Schleiden they 

 are now obsolete; his investigations however into the Hepaticae, Chara- 

 ceae, and Vascular Cryptogams, illustrated by very beautiful drawings 

 trom his own hand, are still of value ; and the same may be said of his 

 ' Handbuch der botanischen Terminologie und Systemkunde ' on account 

 of its numerous figures. 



