BRYOPHYTA. 15 
Group BRYOPHYTA (MUSCINEZ). 
There is a well-marked and characteristic alternation of genera- 
tions in the life-history of the members of this group; the Oophyte 
generation (moss plant) being the more conspicuous of the two. 
No vascular tissue, and no true roots. 
Our knowledge of fossil mosses and liverworts is lamentably 
deficient, and, indeed, the evidence upon which many of the so- 
called fossil mosses have been named is far from satisfactory. 
Scanty as the material is on which the geological history of these 
plants is founded, we are not justified in assuming that they are 
unrepresentedin pre-Tertiary times.' 
The earliest representative of the Iusci to which reference need 
be made is one which was described in the ‘‘ Comptes Rendus”’ 
for 1885? by Zeiller and Renault from the Coal-Measures of 
Commentry; this species, Museites polytrichaceus, has since been 
figured by the same authors in their work on the Commentry 
fossil flora. As usually happens in the case of fossil mosses, 
there are no signs of a capsule. The figures of this carboniferous 
species are certainly much more suggestive of the vegetative parts 
of a moss than any other plant. M. Bescherelle suggested the 
two recent genera, Polytrichum and Rhizogonium, as the nearest 
recent forms as regards the characters of the vegetative parts. 
In connection with Paleozoic mosses the comparison made by 
Solms-Laubach is worth noting‘; he compares Lycopodites Maakit 
from the Coal-Measures of North America, and Z. uncinatus, also 
of Carboniferous age, to certain of the recent Hypnee. Passing 
on to the Mesozoic system, we have further evidence for the 
existence of this group of plants, as Starkie Gardner has shown 
in his paper ‘‘On Mesozoic Angiosperms.”’® He had occasion to 
1 Bower. Annals Bot. vol. v. p. 130. 
2 Vol. c. p: 660. 
3 Fl. foss. Houill. Commentry, pl. xli. figs. 2-4, 
4 Fossil Botany, p. 186. 
5 Geol. Mag. 1886, p. 203. 
