CURREY, ON THE HIGHER CRYPTOGAMIA. 67 
Cryptogamic Botany, and the result has been the production 
of this work. It should therefore be understood, that this 
present volume is not a translation of Dr. Hoffmeister’s ori- 
ginal work, nor a new edition of it, but a new work. It is, 
indeed, founded on the author’s first work, but not only have 
the papers before alluded to been added, but the author has 
contributed also a large quantity of new matter, and revised 
the whole work, so that it is really a complete record of all 
that is known at present. This is not only the case with the 
letter-press, but also with the plates. The work is illustrated 
with no fewer than sixty fine plates, all of which have been 
prepared for this work by the author, and engraved by Mr. 
Tuffen West. 
It would be impossible for us here even to give a sketch of 
the grand series of observations of which this work is the ex- 
ponent. Each group of plants belonging to the higher 
cryptogamia is subjected to a searching investigation, some- 
times by Dr. Hoffmeister, and sometimes by French, but more 
frequently by German observers. We wish we could say that 
we sometimes find the name of an English observer, but the 
higher cryptogamia is not the field of English triumphs. Dr. 
Hoffmeister commences with the structure of Anthoceros, 
and passes on to the leafless and leafy Jungermannie. To 
these succeed the Marchantiaceze, the mosses and ferns. 
Equisetaceze with Pilularia, Marsilea Salvinia, Isoetes, and 
Selaginelia, are the groups which lead to the Coniferze, stand- 
ing on the outside of the cryptogamic group. We may spare 
ourselves any further review of the work by presenting the 
author’s own summary of his labours: 
The comparison of the development of the mosses and liverworts on 
the one hand, with that of the ferns, Equisetacee, Rhizocarpee, and 
Lycopodiacee on the other, discloses the most complete uniformity between 
the fruit-formation on the one hand and the embryo-formation on the 
other. The structure of the archegonium of the mosses—the organ 
within which the fruit-rudiment is formed—is exactly similar to that of 
the archegonium of the vascular cryptogams, the latter being that part of 
the prothallium in the interior of which the embryo of the frond-bearing 
plant originates. In both the large groups of the higher cryptogams 
there is a cell which originates freely in the larger central cell of the 
archegonium, by the repeated division of which (free) cell, the fruit of 
the moss and the frond-bearing plant of the fern are produced. In both, 
the divisions of this cell are suppressed and the archegonium miscarries, 
unless, at the time of the opening of the top of the latter, spermatozoa 
find their way to it. 
Mosses and ferns therefore exhibit remarkable instances of a regular 
alternation of two generations very different in their organization. The 
first generation—that from the spore—is destined to produce the different 
sexual organs, by the co-operation of which the multiplication of the pri- 
mary motber-cell of the second generation, which exists in the central 
cell of the female organ, is brought about, By this multiplication a cellu- 
