1 82 THE PLANT WORLD. 



phytes and Pteridoph}tes. But after admitting " the true sexual 

 stage" (gametophytic) in lower plants, and that this is followed 

 bv the spore-bearing or sporoph\tic stage, he concludes that 

 " this peculiarity has no bearing on the theory under discussion." 

 We must take issue with this view and insist that in the discussion 

 of sexuality among plants we should hold primarily to the game- 

 tophytic or sexual generation and not follow the obsolete and 

 erroneous view which holds that the sporophyte of higher plants 

 is a sexual structure as A\'ard does in his discussion of fertiliza- 

 tion ( ? ) by insects and in his discussions of staminate and pis- 

 tillate plants of Cannabis safiz'a (hemp), Ambrosia trifida (rag 

 weed) and Aiitciinaria plaiitagiitifolia (Indian tobacco). We do 

 not doubt that there is a physiologi-cal sense in which stamens and 

 pistils may be regarded as sexual structures, as W. F. Ganong 

 has done iSciciicc, April 24. 1903), nor do we doubt that the 

 pistil-bearing sporophytes are much stronger than the stamen- 

 bearing ones in many plants, but it is the distortion of the facts 

 of plant morphology and physiology that is objected to, admit- 

 ting that the real female sexual plant is parasitic on the pistil- 

 bearing sporophyte and that the real male sexual plant is like- 

 wise first integrated with the stamen-bearing sporophyte and 

 afterward a parasite on the stigma of the pistil-bearing sporo- 

 phyte. 



Whether or not it is true of man, as Havelock Ellis says in his 

 " Man and Woman," that the female, being " the mother of the 

 new generation," is of more importance " from Nature's point of 

 view " than the male, this may be truly said of the plant world, 

 where cephalization has not wrought wonders and where repro- 

 duction and maintenance of the individual and the race seem to 

 be prime functions. Suppose we begin with Spirogyra, a genus 

 in which there is no well-marked differentiation of sexes and 

 where there is no alternation of generations, unless we include 

 in our idea of alternation rejuvenescence without segmentation. 

 In Spirogyra we find the conjugation of non-motile isogametes, 

 and the cell or filament from which the more active gamete passes 

 to the less active through the conjugating tube may be regarded 

 as male. Here we are near the basis of sexual differentiation in 



