THE ENRICHMENT OF ENGLISH GARDENS 109 



form, and where fertilisation is effected. The masterly 

 researches of Hofmeister (1849-57) fused what had been 

 a number of partial discoveries into a connected and 

 luminous doctrine. He proved that the prothallus is 

 one of two generations in the life-history ; that it 

 begins with a spore and ends with a fertilised egg-cell ; 

 that in the higher cryptogams there is a regular alterna- 

 tion of generations ; that the prothallus of the fern 

 answers to the leafy moss, while the leafy fern is the 

 equivalent of the moss-capsule ; that the egg-cell is the 

 same structure in both cryptogams and flo\vering plants ; 

 that the pollen-tube and the seed are found to-day only 

 in flowering plants ; that the gymnosperms make a 

 transition from the higher cryptogams to the angio- 

 sperms ; that unity of plan pervades the whole series of 

 mosses, ferns, fern-like plants, gymnosperms, and 

 angiosperms. Before Darwin's Origin of Species had 

 appeared Hofmeister presented to evolutionists a clear 

 example of a descent in which every principal term is 

 well authenticated, while the extremes are far apart. 



The Enrichment of English Gardens. 



If some unreasonably patriotic Englishman should 

 be seized with the whim of keeping none but truly 

 British plants in his garden, he might enjoy the shade 

 of the fir, yew, oak, ash, wych-elm, beech, aspen- 

 poplar, hazel, rowan-tree, and the small willows, but 

 he would have to forego the common elm, the larger 

 poplars and willows, the larches, spruces, and cypresses, 

 the rhododendrons, and all the shrubs popularly called 

 laurels. Of fruits he might have the crab-apple, sloe, 

 wild cherry, gooseberry, currants (black and red), the 

 raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry, but none of the 

 improved apples, pears, or plums, and no quinces, 



