32 THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 
and attached to the apex of the macrospore as a cup-shaped 
appendage. 
After fertilisation by the antherozoids there is, for the first time, 
seen the production of a true embryo, which forms a filiform 
suspensor, a body which is wanting in other Cryptogams, but pre- 
sent in all Phanerogams, on which the young plant, with its 
growing point, ligule and two first leaves or cotyledons are 
developed. 
For the first time also there appears in the spore along with the 
female prothallus, yet distinct from it, a mass of cells, which 
supply nutriment to the young and growing embryo. ‘This is the 
endosperm of the seed of the Phanerogam. 
That special feature of Cryptogamic life, the alternation of gener- 
ations, first clearly defined by Hoffmeister in 1851, and com- 
mencing with the Zygosporez, in which the zygospore comprises 
the whole or asexual generation, reaches its highest development 
in the moss, gradually decreases in character through Fern, Equise- 
tum, and Lycopod, until, in the Selaginella, the first or sexual 
generation is wholly comprised in the macrospore prior to 
becoming extinct, in the seed. 
No fossilized traces of this family have been found, but two 
species of the allied family Isoétes have been traced in the 
Miocene period. 
In the course of further remarks Mr. Stanley showed how the 
classification of Cryptogams was mainly based upon the alternation 
of generations, and said that what we commonly called a moss was 
the sexual or first generation of the plant, producing organs of 
fructification, Antheridia and Archegonia, at the apices or on the 
leafy stems, the more highly developed capsule, with its spores, 
constituting the second or asexual generation. 
In the fern the sexual organs are produced on the thallus, that 
portion of the plant with its true roots, stems, fronds, and fibro- 
vascular tissue, and which we recognised as a fern, being the 
second generation, whose immediate function was the production 
of spores. 
Although a great number of vegetating cells were generally 
called spores, the only true spore, capable of reproducing the 
complete life history of the plant, was the one resulting from sexual 
development; all other forms, such as the conidia or gonidia of 
Penicillium, the gemme of the moss, the bulbil of the fern, were 
the result of asexual development, and only able to give rise to 
the same generation of the plant on which they were formed. 
In conclusion, he urged upon the young members of the 
society the study of some of the lower forms of Cryptogamia as 
necessary to the correct appreciation of many of the problems of 
higher plant, or even of animal life. 
