The Seniors of the Forest 295 



microscopic, and never leaves the spore, but con- 

 tinues utterly dependent upon the parent-tree so 

 long as it lives. And careful investigation and 

 comparison show in the highest flowering plants 

 the last vestiges of the prothallus, here almost 

 obliterated, but still distinct enough to show the 

 far-off kinship of fern and rose. 



A few years ago naturalists believed that the 

 ovule of the flowering plants was quickened by 

 union with a globule of protoplasm from the pol- 

 len-tube, while the female cell of the higher flower- 

 less plant developed at the vitalizing contact of a 

 spermatozoid, and that here lay the great difference 

 between the patricians and the plebeians of the 

 vegetable world. 



But recently Mr. Herbert Webber has studied 

 the whole process of fertilization in a subtropical 

 gymnosperm, the coontie or arrow-root of southern 

 Florida (Zamia integrifolia). 



His investigation has proved that the kinship 

 between the flowering and the flowerless plants is 

 far closer than has been hitherto supposed. For 

 what goes down through the pollen-tube of the 

 coontie-blossom is not a mere globule of jelly, as 

 in the crocus, or two globules of jelly, as in the 

 pine, but two peg - top - shaped spermatozoids, 



