36 THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS 



Grasswrack (Zostera); in tropical seas there 

 are a few more, but on the whole the flower is 

 a device which has not proved to be well fitted 

 for marine life, to which, indeed, it is wholly 

 alien in its origin and history. In the sea things 

 still go on in the old way, as they did before 

 flowers were invented. Byron's words in his 

 lines to the Ocean: "Such as Creation's dawn 

 beheld, thou rollest now," are true, in a measure, 

 of its Flora also. 



It is, however, interesting to note that the 

 Angiosperms alone, of all the higher groups 

 of plants, appear to have had any effect at all 

 on the Flora of the sea. We have no marine 

 Moss, no marine Fern, no marine Gymnosperm; 

 it is only when we come to the highest class of all, 

 the Angiosperms, and probably to rather ad- 

 vanced families among them, that we find some 

 few invaders of the Ocean. 



So far as the land is concerned, at all events, 

 the Angiosperms have most effectually entered 

 into their kingdom; they are almost everywhere 

 dominant, and under very nearly all conditions 

 of life have put in their claim and taken possession. 

 They are capable of infinite variety, ranging in 

 dimensions from a frond a millimetre across 

 (the Duckweed Wolffia) to trees 100 metres in 

 height (Eucalyptus), and in complexity from a 

 mere group of simple cells to the elaborate com- 



