264 



CRYPTOGAMIA FILICES. 



* Dorsifercc, 



The Dorsal Ferns, a perfectly natural and most elegant 

 family, compose the first section of this Order. The 

 early writers, as well as Linnaeus and Jussieu, have com- 

 prehended under the denomination of Filices, various 

 plants which are not dorsifercc, but which have some 

 points of agreement with those that are so. They con- 

 stitute however a separate section. 



:Filices dorsifercc, Dorsal Ferns, composing our first sec- 

 tion, consist individually of ix frond, or /^^ bearing the 

 fructification, on its under side, or back, either in some 

 part of the disk, or close to the margin, or to the com- 

 mon, or to the partial, midrib. Of the hcirrcn fo'wers, 

 or stame?is, nothing satisfactory has yet been ascertained. 

 The fertile 07ies in their origin are so minute and ob- 

 scure that nothing of their structure is known. They 

 first become visible in the form of seed-vessels, containing 

 very numerous and very minute «rc/5, proved to be such 

 by their germinating like those of other plants. I see no 

 advantao-e in applying a new denomination to the seeds 

 of these'^and other cryptogamic plants. Hedwiggave 

 the Greek name sjjora to the seeds of Mosses, because he 

 conceived them to differ in their structure and germina- 

 tion, in some indefinite manner, from seeds in general. 

 The most malicious rival of his immortal fame could not 

 have imagined any thing more subversive of that fame, 

 or of his'luminous discoveries. He proved, beyond a 

 doubt, what others had only supposed, the impregnation 

 of the seeds of Mosses, by means of genuine barren 

 flowers and their polle?i. This fact is now as well con- 

 firmed and established as the impregnation of any other 

 plants ; of the Hollyhock for instance, of which a young 

 Swiss, in my time, thought he bad obtained good seeds 

 without the aid of stamens. If therefore Hedwig esta- 

 blished the production of perfect vegetative seeds in the 

 usual way, in the natural order of Miisci, he on the other 

 hand overturned his own discovery, by allowing these 

 seeds to be termed sporcc. For a long time indeed, in all 

 his writings, he called them semina ; nor is it worth in- 

 (juiring how he came to alter that established term, which 



