106 REPORT— 1851. 



bearing the calyptra, the lower part forms the vaginule. The upper cell of 

 the spindle-shaped body then becomes developed into the capsule, and the 

 calyptra often becoming organically connected with this, as the base of the 

 seta does with the end of the stem, it in such cases undergoes further deve- 

 lopment during the time it is being carried upwards by the growing fruit. 



The view now entertained by Schimper, Hofmeister, and others of the 

 reproduction of the Mosses is, that the antheridia are truly male organs, and 

 that they exert, by means of the spiral filaments, a fertilizing influence upon the 

 pistillidia, it being assumed tliat those bodies, or the fluid wliich they are 

 bathed in, penetrate down the canal of the style or neck-like portion of tlie 

 l^istillidium to reach the minute cell, the supi)0sed embryonal cell, situated 

 in the globular portion or ' germen ' of the pistillidium, and thus render it 

 capable of becoming developed into a perfect fruit. 



No such process of fertilization has actually been observed in the Mosses, 

 and therefore all the evidence is at present merely circumstantial ; but this is 

 very strong. In the first place it is stated as an undoubted fact by Schimpev 

 and Bruch, that in the dioecious Mosses, those on which the antheridia and 

 pistillidia occur in separate plants, fruit is never produced on the so-called 

 male plants, and never on the so-called female unless the males occur in the 

 vicinity ; several examples are cited in the work of Schimper above referred 

 to ; when the sexes occur alone, the increase of the plant is wholly dependent 

 on the propagation by gemmae or innovations. 



By the discovery of the antheridia and pistillidia in the other higher Cry- 

 ptogams, the arguments from analogy greatly strengthen the hypothesis of 

 the sexuality of Mosses. 



Further observation is required, then, for the direct proof of the occur- 

 rence of a process of fertilization in the Mosses ; but the facts now before us 

 all tend to prove their sexuality if we argue from analogy, and the probabi- 

 lities deduced from the negative evidence above referred to in regard to the 

 dioecious species. 



It is unnecessary to give any account of the well-known structure of the 

 Moss capsules ; yet in order to render the comparison with the phsenomena 

 of the life of Mosses with those of tlie other leafy Cryptogams complete, it 

 may be worth while to allude to the germination of the spores. The spore 

 is a single cell, with a double coat, like a pollen-grain ; tliis germinates by 

 the protrusion of the inner coat in the form of a filamentous or rather tubu- 

 lar process, which grows out and becomes subdivided by septa so as to form 

 a confervoid filament. The lateral branches bud out from some of the 

 cells, some elongating into secondary filaments, others at once undergoing 

 a more active development, and by the multiplication of their cells, assuming 

 the condition of conical cellular masses, upon which the forms of Moss leaves 

 may soon be detected ; these cellular masses becoming buds from which the 

 regular leafy stems arise. 



Hepatlcce. — The genera comprehended in this family present a wonderful 

 variety of structure in the reproductive organs, but in almost ail of them 

 the existence of the two kinds of organs called pistillidia and antheridia have 

 long been demonstrated, and in most cases the development of the sporangia 

 from the so-called pistillidia has been traced. In those genera in which the 

 plants most resemble the Mosses in the vegetative portion, as in Jungerman- 

 nice, the pistillidia are very like those of the Mosses ; this is also the case 

 in Marchantia ; but in Pel/ia, Anlhoceros and other genera, the rudiment of 

 the sporangium bears a striking resemblance to the so-called ovules of the 

 Ferns, Rhizocarpeae, Sfc, pcguyrjog upon the expanded fronds very much in 



