THE FERN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 47 



color of all these forms of plant growth, they may be character- 

 ized as not green. They represent a group of plants that re- 

 quire nourishment from some source besides air and water; 

 some are parasitic drawing nourishment from living plants or 

 animals, while others are saprophytic living on decaying or- 

 ganic matter. Though widely different in character, we may 

 call them all fungi. With these ideas clearly in mind we are 

 better prepared to appreciate the classifications which follow. 



1 25. System of Linnaeus. In the sexual system of Lin- 

 naeus the plants now collectively known as "flowerless plants" 

 formed the twenty-fourth class, to which he gave the name 

 CRYPTOGAMIA (hidden marriage), because in them no proof of 

 a sexual reproduction was apparent. His remaining twenty- 

 three classes constituted what are now called PHANEROGAMIA 

 or flowering plants, in which the sexual organs (stamens and 

 pistils) were apparent then as now. 



126. Linnaeus divided the class Cryptogamia into orders 

 as follows : 



I. FiLlCES, the ferns and their allies; 



II. Musci, the true mosses and club-mosses ; 



III. ALG^E, which comprised hepatics and lichens in addi- 

 tion to what the term now includes ; 



IV. FUNGI, mushrooms, etc. 



It will thus be seen that Linnaeus simply put under concise 

 definition the groups still popularly recognized (124). 



127. Before the Linnaean system was discarded, his fol- 

 lowers had increased the orders to eight, the Equtsetacea hav- 

 ing been separated from the ferns, the Lycopodmece from the 

 mosses, and the Hepaticce (liverworts) and Lichenes (lichens) 

 from the algae. 



1 28. Without stopping at the various stages in the history 

 of classification since Linnaeus, we will present briefly the sys- 

 tem followed by the leading authorities in Europe,* and then 

 outline with more detail the system commonly followed in this 

 country, which is based on methods of sexual reproduction and 

 follows morphological and fundamental rather than physiologi- 

 cal characters. 



* Outlines of Classification and Special Morphology of Plants. By Dr. K. 

 Goebel. (English Translation.) Oxford, 1887. (Macmillan & Co.) 



