184 THE PLANT WORLD. 



plants many times larger, which produced female sexual organs. 

 In those species of the common ferns in which the sexual plants 

 are unisexual, the facts are in accord with Air. Ward's gynaeco- 

 centric theory. With the advent of heterospory, the sexual plants 

 have become uniformly unisexual, and much reduced, never be- 

 coming free from the spores, males developing from microspores 

 and females from macrospores. But here again the females, on 

 which the sporophytes are more or less dependent in their early 

 development, are much less reduced than the males, and therefore 

 the stronger plants. This condition is illustrated in the following 

 well-known genera: Isoctcs, MarsUia, AzoUa, Salvinia and 

 SelagiucUa. 



Finally, in the Spermaphytes, our common flowering plants, we 

 have great reduction of the sexual generation. Nevertheless, the 

 sexual plants exist in these highest members of the plant world, 

 and the sexes are here uniformly distinct. In the Gymnosperms 

 (conifers for the most part), where the reduction of the male 

 and female gametophytes has not gone so far as in the Angio- 

 sperms (herbs and trees and shrubs other than conifers), the 

 female gametophyte is plainly better developed than the male. 

 In Angiosperms there may be some dispute as to what consti- 

 tutes the female gametophyte, and a new structure, the endo- 

 sperm (which is perhaps a second sporophyte), comes in to aid in 

 the nourishment of the young offspring (sporophyte) of the fe- 

 male gametoph}te. Here not only the male gametophyte, but the 

 female as well, is reduced to little more than reproductive cell or 

 cells, and, consequently, in these highest plants, we may not speak 

 quite so confidently of the superiority of the female over the male 

 gametophyte. And it is just here that Mr. Ward and some other 

 writers bring in the sporophyte, or asexual generation, and regard 

 part or all of it as a sexual structure. We admit readily enough 

 that, in dioecious species, the pistil-bearing sporophyte is often 

 better developed than the stamen-bearing one, and this for the 

 same reason that the female sexual plant is better developed than 

 the male among lower plants, viz., for the nourishment of the 

 sporophyte (here the intraseminal, embryonic sporophyte), which 

 is, for a time, at least largely dependent upon sporophytic (non- 



