and its relation to that in the Animal Kingdom. 453 



grown Moss-plant forms a new protonema-tissue (nurses) in 

 place of immediately reproducing itself; with the asexual mul- 

 tiplication of this is combined the same ascending metamorphosis 

 as before, the propagula of the protonema-threads re-assuming 

 the form of the perfect plant. 



The alternation of generations of the Mosses, — both on account 

 of the occurrence of two diverse generations of nurses, and in 

 reference to the production of these, the first time through go- 

 nidia*, the second time through buds, — bears a striking resem- 

 blance to the alternation of generations in the Trematoda : that 

 the first nurse remains mechanically connected with the mother- 

 plant, seems altogether an inessential condition, and has its 

 counterpart in Coryne, in which the sexual animals remain in 

 connexion with the nurse producing them, and almost appear 

 to be the sexual organs (testes and ovaries) of the nurse-indi- 

 vidual. 



To the much-favoured notion which regards the prothallium of 

 the Ferns as a distinct generation, standing parallel with the leafy 

 Moss-plant (as a sexual generation), while the morphologically 

 developed Fern-plant is placed beside the capsule (with the seta) 

 of the Moss, as a nurse, no objection is to be made, provided the 

 view is carried out logically, and, as is necessary, extended to 

 the Phanerogamia. This carrying-out leads inevitably to a more 

 morphological conception of the idea of a " vegetable individual,'* 

 in Al. Braun's sense f- We must then regard, not merely the 

 leafy (simple !) Moss-plant bearing antheridia and archegonia, 

 and the prothallium of the Ferns, as well as the prothallium 

 enclosed in the megaspore of the Lycopodiacese and Rhizocarpese, 

 together with the microspores, — as complete, sexually developed 

 plants, but also the flowers of the Phanerogamia, now once and 

 for all corresponding to the prothallium. But if we regard the 

 flower — the floral shoot — as a perfect plant, as an individual, 

 we must attribute the same value to the preceding shoots ; we 

 must regard the compound plant J as a colony of polymorphous 



* These should perhaps be regarded merely as a peculiar form of buds. 

 Montague described, in a letter to Berkeley (Annals, xvi. p. 354), a mon- 

 strosity of Eucamptodon perichcBtialis, the perfectly ripe capsule of which 

 contained buds instead of spores, analogous to the gemmule-cups of Mar- 

 chantia, and Berkeley confirms the fact. In reference also to the import 

 which we have above attributed to the spores of Ferns, Henfrey's remarks 

 on this case appear very much to the point (Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 2. ix^ 

 p. 453, note), when he says that it is a distinct evidence of the bud-nature 

 of the spores of the higher Cryptogamia. 



t Al. Braun, Das Individuum der Pflanze. Berlin, 1853. (Annals, ser. 2. 

 XV.) See also former note, page 449. 



X The simple plant, in Schleiden's sense, appears — if, in the present 

 obscurity which prevails upon the laws of the ramification of roots, we may 

 be permitted to regard only the ascending growth — as a colony of homO' 



