[Vol. 2 

 358 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN 



on the principle of morphological homology, which he believed 

 were great enough to justify their inclusion in the same class. 

 To justify his arrangement in one large group of plants with 

 such diverse aspects and habitats, he cites the inclusion of the 

 Lemnaceae and palms in the great group of the monocots. We 

 could not then interpret his inclusion of the sac fungi and red 

 algae in one class, the Carposporeae, as indicating that the 

 former were derived from the latter. 



Sachs says (74, p. 288) that in order to find the relation- 

 ships between plant divisions one must compare the simplest, 

 not the highest forms. By this method he finds that the 

 Coleochaetaceae and Characeae are linked, on one hand to 

 the simplest Florideae, and on the other to the simplest As- 

 comycetes. Each of these series, he says, has developed in 

 its own peculiar manner to higher forms, so that if one com- 

 pared the most complete Ascomycetes with the coleochaetes 

 only very slight resemblances are to be found. From this it 

 is very clear that Sachs, at that time, had no thought of the 

 derivation of the Ascomycetes from the Florideae. There is 

 nothing to indicate that he believed the Ascomycetes descended 

 from the charas and simplest coleochaetes, to which he says 

 the simplest Ascomycetes are most closely related. Nor 

 would his theory require a common ancestor for the two 

 groups. Because of the morphological resemblance between 

 cystocarp and ascocarp, he would have united the Ascomy- 

 cetes and Florideae into a higher group even had he believed 

 that the former were derived from the Phycomycetes. 



It has been said by Sachs ( '96, p. 204) that the fungi as a 

 whole cannot be valued as an architype because, as apochlo- 

 rates, they must be descended from green plants. The bacteria 

 he would derive from the Cyanophyceae, the Phycomycetes 

 from the Siphoneae, and the Ascomycetes (or at least the 

 Discomycetes) from the Rhodophyceae. The predominant 

 feature indicating the descent of the sac fungi from the red 

 algae he now sees in the procarp of both groups ( '96, p. 205). 



The chlorophylless seed plants have only a slight form-pro- 

 ducing power or motive, as Sachs has pointed out ( '96, p. 205), 

 since they occur mostly as small plant groups within certain 



