0> THE PRESENT STATE OF ®UR KiVOWLEDGE OP CRYPT0GA3I0US PLANTS. 



Lecture delircred before ihc Vienna Soelefi/for the Diffiifiion of Scientific Knowledge, hy Hein- 



ricli Wilhelni lleiehardt. 



[Translated for the SmitlisoLiiaii Iustitu<ion, by Professdr C. T. Kuoeh.] 



lu the last few decades many leading botanists have giv.eu especial 

 attention to the study of cryptogamous plants, for tbey very properly 

 recognized the importance to tlieir science which a more perfect knowl- 

 edge of the development, growth, and propagation, as well as of the struc- 

 ture, of these simplest of organism would be. Through the combined 

 labors of much talent, a large number of the most interesting dis- 

 coveries have been made. An entirely new basis for this department 

 of botany has been created, the i)revious views about seed-bearing 

 lilants in many respects reformed, and a very general interest excited 

 in the subject. For this reason it seems proper for me to report to 

 this society, whose object is the diffusion of scientific knowledge, the 

 present state of our information with respect to the cryptogams. 



It is evident that it is only possible to give a condensed view of the 

 most important facts, and to consider even these only in their general out- 

 lines, in the short time allotted to a lecture. 



Th* cryptogams were almost wholly unknown to the ancients. Even 

 Theophrastus and Fedanius Diosloridcs enumerate only twenty species 

 of them in their works. In the Middle Ages no progress w^as made in a 

 knowledge of them. Attention was only paid to a few species of crypto- 

 gams, to which were attributed medicinal or magical virtues. When, 

 with the revival of classical learning and the reformation, science also 

 received a fresh impulse, when Brunfcls rejected the traditions of the 

 old school and turned to the study of domestic idants and thereby cre- 

 ated anew basis ibr botanical research, botanists were too much occu- 

 pied with the observation of seminiferous plants to pay much attention 

 to the lower orders. It was not until the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century that two men appeared who actively took up the studj" of cryp- 

 togams, and who must therefore be considered as the founders of this 

 branch of the science. They are Antonio ^Micheli, sui)erir.tendent of the 

 botanic garden at Florence, and Joliann .Jacob Dillenius, a German, 

 who later became su[)erintendent of the botanic garden at Eltham, 

 and professor at the University of Oxford. I cannot enter into a de- 

 tailed account of the labors of these two fathers of cryi>togauuc botany 5 

 let it sufiice, therefore, to indicate that they rei)resent the two chief 

 schools which still characterize the study of cryptogams to-day. 



