REJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 311 



Ferns are so alike, and at the same time so transient, that 

 it would scarcely be possible to institute profitable obser- 

 vations j so much the more is investigation of the hybrids 

 of the Mosses, which, when once attention is directed to 

 them, will certainly be found in greater numbers, to be 

 recommended to bryologists. The two hybrid Mosses 

 observed by Bayrhoffer, seem, from his account, actually 

 to have possessed the characters of the mother-plants, 

 (Physcomitrium fasciculare and pyriforme,} in respect to 

 the vegetative organs, while the fruit is stated to have 

 exhibited, especially in the structure of the peristome, a 

 distinct approximation to the character of the supposed 

 father, Funaria liygrometrica. From the occurrence of 

 numerous archegonia upon one and the same moss-plant, 

 we might expect even to find, when the hybrid impreg- 

 nation only affected particular of them while others 

 were fertilized by the proper species, two kinds of fruit 

 perfected on the same "stock," normal and hybrid frmts. 



Supposing these views to be actually true of the 

 hybrids of the Mosses and Ferns, it might afford us a 

 further confirmation of the hypothesis, that the indi- 

 vidual cycle of development of these plants does not begin 

 with the spore, but with the central cell of the arche- 

 gonium, which is called into life by impregnation. If, 

 on the other hand, we keep to the old conception of the 

 commencement of the individual with the spore, these 

 strange processes will appear merely as a further proof 

 of the intimate connection and interlacement of the indi- 

 vidual development and reproduction, in which respect they 

 are of especial interest here, particularly when we place 

 them in relation with the cases already mentioned,* which 

 indicate the possibility of the occurrence of aberrations 

 ordinarily connected with the reproduction, in the midst 

 of the individual development, (in the wider or narrower 

 sense !) in the higher divisions of the Vegetable Kingdom. 



It is well-known that those very varieties of plants 

 which are most important and interesting, those in which 

 * See page 24. 



