454 Dr. L. Radlkofer on Fecundation in the Vegetable Kingdom, 



individuals, and the shoots which necessarily precede the flower 

 in the series as so many generations of nurses. In like manner 

 with the stems of the Lycopodiacese, Rhizocarpese, and Equise- 

 tacese. But then we must not compare the compound Moss- 

 plant as a whole unconditionally with the prothallium (the floral 

 shoot) of the Ferns, but only the floral shoot of the Moss-plant*. 



The first two (Lycopodiacese and Rhizocarpese) would in this 

 case correspond almost completely to the already- mentioned 

 conditions of Coryne, since here the developed individuals, at 

 least the males, appear as it were as merely organs appendicular 

 to the nurses. The fact that the assumption of this point of 

 view leads to the appearance sometimes of the nurse (Ferns) and 

 sometimes of the sexual plant (simple Moss) as the morphologically 

 developed member of the series, — could not give ground for any 

 limitation of it, since the like occurs in the Animal Kingdom, 

 which, moreover, aff^ords us information that morphological and 

 functional development do not keep side by side in all cases 

 (retrogression of the parasitic Crustacea at the period of puberty). 



I hope in this way to have successfully elucidated a contra- 

 diction which must have been repugnant to all primary impres- 

 sions of the facts, — the contradiction which lay in making the 

 prothallium of the Fern equivalent to the ramified Moss-plant, 

 and the separation of the latter from the vegetative formations 

 of all the higher groups of vegetables. Which of the two 

 views I have here attempted to expound, deserves the prefer- 

 ence, must be decided by every one for himself, according as he 

 adopts a physiological or the pure morphological conception of 

 the 'vegetable individuaP — until science has decided the point. 

 I confess freely that I have been guided merely by the simple 

 verdict of natural impressions, in for the present inclining to the 

 former. 



Against one thing more I must declare, and that decidedly, 

 namely, against the view which makes the Ferns fecundate in 

 the middle of their lives, by this becoming capable of growing up 

 to perfection, — according to which, the new individual cycle of 

 development commences not with the germinal vesicle, but with 

 the spore (in the Mosses as well as the Ferns) f. To show that 

 the name spore is applied to things of very diverse import, is almost 

 superfluous, after what we have said above J. The spores of the 



morphous (sexual-) individuals, developed without antecedent nurse-forma- 

 tions. 



* The merely trifling changes which would thus be. required in columns 

 2nd to the 5th of our Table I. are included in Table II. All the other 

 columns remain unaltered. 



t V. Mohl, Vegetable Cell, p. 125. London, 1852.— Al. Braun, Verjiin- 

 gung, Sic. (Ray Translation, 1853, p. 307). 



X Neither morpliology nor the history of development give us invariably 



