I 



j^VV YORK 

 BOTANlCAt; 



PREFACE. 



THE growing interest in the lower forms of 

 vegetable life, which has been stimulated 

 during the past thirty or forty years by improvements 

 in the microscope and in methods of manipulation, 

 has led me to believe that an account of some of 

 the most remarkable of the facts and phenomena of 

 cryptogamic vegetation would prove of considerable 

 interest to young readers, and even suggestive to 

 older ones. It is not so much to the results of new or 

 recent investigations that I have desired to give pre- 

 dominant interest, as to the general influence which 

 increased knowledge of the structure and history of 

 these minute and obscure plants has had upon the 

 romantic beliefs and unsubstantial theories of a less 

 enlightened age. It may be true that many of the 

 facts now collected are not absolutely new, but may 

 be found scattered through learned treatises, or dis- 

 persed over scientific journals ; yet in that condition 

 they were not available for general reading, nor were 

 they likely to come under the notice of any except 

 those specially interested in each particular branch of 



