2 1 8 SJ GA CITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



and frugiferous poverty ; neither their flowers nor 

 fruits have any beauty that any insect or animal 

 should desire them. 



Among the Cryptogamia a similar fickleness is 

 displayed. Between the giant Tree-ferns, growing 

 to the height of 40 and 50 feet, and the Filmy 

 Ferns {Hyinenophylhtiii)^ some of which rarely grow 

 to more than two or three inches, we have a range 

 of size and mass hardly exceeded in any other order 

 of plants. And yet both these kinds of Ferns pass 

 through almost identically the same embryonic stages. 

 Both spring from the fertilised archegoniums pro- 

 duced on prothalli, so nearly alike in size and shape 

 that it seems wonderful how one can develop into 

 a forest tree, and the other remain to compete for 

 possession of moist ground with diminutive Mosses ! 



There are few orders of plants which do not 

 possess " poor relations " ; some are even worse off, 

 for they have to own kinship, not only with " doubt- 

 ful characters," but with actual robbers and murderers 

 of their own kind, as the Convolvulus has with the 

 Dodder. Whilst the main mass of the members of 

 an order have progressed, or at any rate held their 

 own, a few have slowly fallen behind — have become 

 smaller of size, feebler of stem, possess fewer flowers 

 (and those gradually dwarfed), until eventually ex- 

 tinction terminates a struggle which, perhaps, has 

 extended through an entire geological period. 



Many living plants even now are contending in 



