190 Mr. H. O. Stephens on the Origin 



XXV. — On the Origin of some of the Lower Forms of Vege- 

 tation. By Mr. Henry Oxley Stephens. 



To the Editors of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 

 Gentlemen, 

 No one ever directed his attention to the oeconomy of the 

 lower forms of vegetation without soon arriving at the highly 

 interesting but perplexing problem of their origin and repro- 

 duction. No question in vegetable physiology is of higher 

 moment than this, none surrounded by greater difficulties, 

 and in none is the inquirer more prone to error than in at- 

 tempting conclusions from the negative facts (if the term is 

 admissible) with which he has to deal. The obscurity in 

 which, from its very nature, the subject is involved, is so 

 dense, that many physiologists avoid it altogether as hope- 

 less, considering it to be beyond human intelligence ; whilst, 

 on the other hand, some rash speculators, drawing inferences 

 which the doubtful premises cannot warrant, descend at once 

 into the profound of materialism *, and do not hesitate to in- 

 trude with unholy footsteps within the sacred precincts of for- 

 bidden ground. Nevertheless, the origin of the lower tribes 

 of Fungi (for it is to these alone this paper refers) is a ques- 

 tion as open to discussion, and as fit for investigation, as any 

 other point of Natural History. There is no perfect Fungus 

 which is not furnished in some part with an apparatus which 

 bears certain minute bodies called sporidia, having some de- 

 gree of resemblance to the reproductive bodies (sporules) of 

 Ferns, Mosses and Hepaticae, which last are well known to 

 produce their like kinds by a process analogous to the ger- 

 mination of seeds. It has been assumed (and indeed generally 

 admitted, though I am not aware directly proved) that these 

 sporidia are the seeds of Fungi, producing by cryptogamic ger- 

 mination the same species as the parent plant ; whilst other 

 physiologists, admitting the sporidia to be capable of continu- 

 ing the species, do not consider this to be the only method, 

 or as indeed at all adequate to account for the production of 

 Fungi in certain situations. 



This is the question we are about to discuss. It is argued 

 in behalf of propagation by spores, that these bodies, which 

 are produced in such numbers as to be beyond all estimate, 

 must have a definite office to perform, and that from their 

 peculiar lightness, they are, as soon as shed from the hyme- 

 nian of the parent plant, wafted through the air, and thus 



* [It does not seem clear in what sense onr Correspondent emplo3's this 

 term. — Ed.] 



