X. SEEDLESS PLANTS 



THEIR PLACE IN NATURE 



355. Order of Development. All the forms that have 

 hitherto claimed our attention belong to the great division 

 known as Spermatophytes, or seed-bearing plants, some- 

 times designated also as Phanerogams, or flowering plants. 

 They comprise the higher forms of vegetable life, and 

 because they are more striking and better known than the 

 other groups, they have been taken up first, since it is 

 easier for ordinary observers to work their way backwards 

 from the familiar to the less known. 



But it must be understood that this is not the order of 

 nature. The geological record shows that the simplest 

 forms of life were the first to appear and from these all 

 the higher forms were gradually evolved. There is no 

 sharp line of division between any of the orders and 

 groups of plants, but the line of development can be 

 traced through a succession of almost imperceptible 

 changes from the lowest forms to the highest, and it 

 is only by a study of the former that botanists have 

 come to understand the true nature and structure of the 

 latter. 



It would be impossible, in a work like this, to attempt 

 even a superficial view of the various divisions of seedless 

 plants. Many of them are of microscopic size, and can not 

 be studied without expensive laboratory appliances and 

 skill in the manipulation of the microscope, which not 

 everybody can possess. A short study of only a few typi- 

 cal forms will be attempted here, in order to make clearer 

 some of the processes of plant life that have already been 

 touched upon. 



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