324 QUARTERLY CHRONICLE OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 
Tieghem even succeeded in cross-fertilizing the carpogonia 
of Coprinus ephemeroides with the antherozoids of C. radzatus. 
Rees,! working about the same time on Coprinus sterco- 
rarius, has observed the development of the ‘‘ antherozoids,” 
and has also seen the fertilized carpogonia, but he had not 
observed their unfertilized condition, or the process of fertili- 
zation. 
LN; 
From the preceding sketch of the present state of our 
knowledge, it will be seen that Sachs’s classification, though 
in some respects it does violence to a perfectly natural arrange- 
ment, on the whole succeeds in marshalling the Thallophytes 
according to their morphological complexity. That being 
the case, it must, to a certain extent, have also a phyloge- 
netic significance. Sachs’s four classes are, in fact, as already 
suggested, horizons which intersect the branches of the yet 
imperfectly understood phylogeny. And it is probable that 
the groups included between these horizons are rightly placed 
there, but that what we have still to learn is their vertical 
relations to one another. So far, then, the classification is 
an improvement on most artificial classifications, which 
usually, on grounds of expediency, abandon all attempt to 
preserve anything of a natural, ¢.e. of a phylogenetic, ar- 
rangement. Even Linnzus, who is generally regarded as 
the great supporter of utilitarian taxonomy, was by no means 
satisfied with an artificial classification. At the commence- 
ment of his ‘ Fragmenta Methodi Naturalis’ (1738) he declares, 
‘Diu et ego circa methodum naturalem inveniendam laboravi, 
bene multa que adderem obtinui, perficere non potui, con- 
tinuaturus dum vixero.”’ 
In the third edition of his ‘ Lehrbuch,’ Sachs suggested 
that the Alge were the original stock of the vegetable 
kingdom, and that the Fungi branched off from the 
Siphophycee, which produced the Phycomycetes and these 
in turn the other types. The agreement between these two 
groups of unicellular Oosporee is undoubtedly very great, 
and it is sufficiently explained if we suppose that the Phy- 
comycetes are simply Siphophycee modified for a parasitic life. 
There is no reason to suppose that the agreement has more 
significance than this, and Sachs has therefore abandoned 
the Stphophycee as the starting-point of the fungoid series. 
Without attempting actually to construct a phylogeny of 
' “Ueber den Befruchtungsvorgang bei den Basidiomyceten; Sitzungsb. 
d. Physik. Med. Soe. in Erlangen,’ H{t. vii, 1875. 
