M. Miiller on the Development of the Lycopodiacese. 319 



the branches and leaves. Then^ figure 1 7 appears to me so like 

 a young plant of Fissidens, a moss which often enough occurs in 

 flower-pots in our green-houses, that I am involuntarily-^I hope 

 M. Goppert will, in such an important circumstance, be charita- 

 ble enough to pardon me — led to imagine that he may have 

 been deceived. By one single argument however Goppert could 

 free himself at once from this suspicion — if, namely, he can as- 

 sure us positively that he has seen the antheridium-spore still 

 adherent to the young germinating plant ; a condition of which 

 he has made no mention. If this was actually the case, an axis 

 must have been developed at once from the spore, and thus a 

 confusion with a young moss plant would have been impossible, 

 because in this as in many other Cryptogamous families a proto- 

 thallus is developed first, and then a bud is afterwards produced 

 upon this, from which the axis and the remainder of the plant are 

 developed. Moreover the Lycopodial nature might have been 

 pointed out at once, from the structure of the leaf. But Goppert^ s 

 figures give nothing of this, and, alas ! the subsequent develop- 

 ment of the plant is wanting altogether. 



Although I do not now throw any doubt on the possibility of 

 the germination of the antheridium-spores, yet one involuntarily 

 asks, how then are the Lycopodia without oophoridium-spores 

 propagated ? we must still wait for further observations which 

 shall offer a complete history of the development. But it 

 always presents itself to me as a peculiar phajnomenon, that some 

 observers have unanimously described plants produced from an- 

 theridium-spores, while others again have altogether failed in 

 discovering them. This has been my own case, although I have 

 kept Lye. denticulatum more than half a year in a room, and 

 observed dozens of germinating plants developed from oopho- 

 ridium-spores and have sown numbers of antheridium-spores. 

 Just the same has occurred to me with the spores of Psilotum 

 triquetrum, although, according to Kaulfuss (/. c. pp. 10 and 27), 

 the inspector Otto found Bernhardia dichotoma quite separate 

 from the parent plants upon roots of plants, in many pots in 

 the Berlin gardens, a phsenomenon which Dr. Fischer has also 

 observed upon a palm root in Gorenki. Enough of all these opi- 

 nions and assurances ; they are altogether too doubtful to allow 

 any conclusions to be drawn from them. One can only urgently 

 desire that this important point may right soon be settled. 



§ 6. Retrospect, 



The following are the points which may be considered as surely 

 proved in the foregoing history of development : — 



1. The Lycopodiacece possess two kinds of organs of fructifica- 



