AND ON POLYEMBRYONY IN THE HIGHER PLANTS. 15 
and firmer wall, when it is either nourished by the mucus of the 
conducting cellular tissue, or when it merely touches the aper- 
tures of the tunics, and proceeds within these to the summit of 
the nucleus. 
I find a very important proof of the correctness of our older 
views respecting the sexes of plants in the recent discoveries 
that the contents of the anthers in the lower plants contain a 
substance which exhibits a very great similarity to the sper- 
matic fluid of animals; I mean the discoveries of the occur- 
rence of spermatozoa in the anthers of Mosses and Hepatice, 
and in the Chare. Whether these forms, to which I have ap- 
plied the name of vegetable spermatozoa, be considered as actual 
animals, as intestinal worms, or anything else, it matters not. 
I merely wish them to be regarded as identical with what have 
been asserted to be the spermatozoa of animals. Now I believe 
that it is more reasonable to conclude, from the similar occur- 
rence of these substances, that they possess like functions in 
plants and in animals, than that it is necessary to go into 
lengthened proofs. But if it be admitted that the fovilla in the 
Cryptogamia is really the fertilizing male substance—which in- 
deed cannot be in the least doubted, from the relation which the 
anthers of those Cryptogamia bear to the female organs,— we 
shall find ourselves also compelled to regard the fovilla in the 
interior of the pollen-grain as the fertilizing male substance. 
The controversy which has been carried on respecting the na- 
ture of the self-active molecules in the interior of the fovilla is 
well known to the readers of this little work ; but I consider it no 
longer necessary to reply to the statement of some writers who 
believe that I have mistaken amylum-granules for those self 
active molecules which I compare in their signification to the 
Spermatozoa of animals. But since these remarkably-formed 
spermatozoa have been detected in so many of the lower plants, 
similar even in the highest degree to those in the sperm of 
animals, the question may undoubtedly be started, how it can 
be explained that the spermatozoa in the higher and lower plants 
are so enormously different, that, with the exception of their 
independent motion, no other similarity can be detected between 
them. This independent movement of the spermatic molecules 
in the higher plants I have recently, again, been frequently ob- 
serving, in order to investigate its cause with the magnifying 
powers at present at our disposal; but I have unfortunately 
