54 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



the spores are dispersed. No such structures are met 

 with in mosses. 



Griffiths says that they are by no means universal 

 in the Hepatics, and hence too much importance has, 

 in his opinion, been attached to them. *' They are 

 almost universally associated with the existence of 

 fibrous cells of the capsule ; and this would seem to 

 corroborate the truth of Mirbel's conjecture, that they 

 are modifications of such cells. In fact, the transi- 

 tion between these cells and the elaters is very 

 evident in Pellia epipJiylla. In their younger states 

 they consist of an elongated cell, containing one or 

 two grumous nuclei. They are not to be confounded, 

 as has been done, with the remains of cellular tissue, 

 which occurs intermixed with the sporules in some 

 genera. Too much stress, he thinks, has been laid 

 on these organs as inducing the dispersion of the 

 sporules, neither did he see, in any instance, that the 

 sporules adhere to the elaters." And, again, when 

 writing of Marchantia, he says, " Unless the elaters 

 germinate, I cannot imagine any special use they 

 may be of, because no means are visible to further 

 their association with the sporules — the only organs 

 for which they can with reason be supposed to be 

 provided. They are subject to precisely the same 

 contingencies as the sporules, at the dehiscence of 

 the fruit, a period when they are in their state of 

 greatest oerfection." 



