15 
flowerless plants, are very much more numerous than flowering plants. 
Great numbers of them are very small, so small indeed, that, but 
for the microscope, their very existence would never have been 
known. Others, such as tree ferns, really reach the dimensions of 
small trees, and are highly ornamental, but our own country pro- 
duces nothing in the way of cryptogamic vegetation taller than 
common brake or bracken. That which, in a way, represents the 
seed of flowering plants in the spore, and this tiny thing often gives 
rise to the new plant by a very round-about process. It will bring 
us, by a few interesting steps, to the subject of this evening, if we 
look at the list of cryptogamic families and arrange them ‘‘ in order 
of merit,’’ or, in other words, give them rank according to their 
structure. The presence of wood (fibro-vascular bundles), places 
the Filices, Equisetacee, and Lycopodiacer, above those orders 
which are made up of ce//ular tissue only. Again, those orders 
which, although made up wholly of cellular tissue, present a 
distinction of parts are higher in the scale than those which do not. 
Last, then, come plants made up of cellular tissue, but consisting 
of a network of threads, or a more or less leaf-like expansion, called 
a thallus, and not having root, stem, or leaves distinguishable from 
each other. The thallus-producing plants are called Thallogens or 
Thallophytes, and constitute what used to be called the orders Alge, 
Lichenes, and Fungi. [You will bear in mind that a mushroom is 
not the plant proper, but only the fructifying apparatus, the 
vegetative portion (mycelium) called mushroom spawn and com- 
posed of a network of threads, being underground]. Agreeing in 
certain points, asin the absence of stomata and in not developing a 
' prothallus in germination, these orders differ from each other a good 
‘deal—at least in their higher forms. Fungi are much lower in the 
scale than Algs, because they contain no chlorophyll and are there- 
fore unable to take up and assimilate gaseous food. Chlorophyll 
does occur in Lichens, but only in certain small cells, known as 
gonidia, and usually abundant in what is called the gonidial layer. 
In the eyes of the student these chlorophyll-containing cells are 
of great importance, because over them rages chronic war. They 
are indeed a batile ground on which is now being fought out the 
question as to what Lichens really are and what they are not. 
The ablest men are to the front in this scientific campaign, the 
. real nature of the gonidia being ‘‘the question in dispute.” 
Schwendener, following up the researches of DeBary, about 20 
years back, took out his position thus—Jichens, said he, are not 
‘simple but composite organisms—they are not an autonomous 
group at all, but dual growths, neither one thing nor the other 
but a mixture. Their gonidia are neither more nor less than so 
many simple green or greenish-blue 4/ge, whilst the other portions 
