224 THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS 



nical word for a spore-bearing fruit developed 

 from an egg-cell, as in Bryophytes). The large- 

 leaved types, the most remote from the supposed 

 sporogonium origin, were more prevalent in the 

 earliest known Palaeozoic Flora than they are 

 now. Small-leaved plants existed, namely, the 

 Lycopods; they were mostly trees, and such 

 herbaceous forms as are known were as highly 

 organised as their living successors. 



Neither is there any evidence of the superior 

 antiquity of the Bryophytic type. There are 

 only one or two doubtful fossils of Palaeozoic 

 age which might be referred to Mosses or Liver- 

 worts, whereas, as we have seen, the Vascular 

 Cryptogams were enormously developed in the 

 earliest land-floras of which we have any record. 



Negative evidence can never be conclusive, 

 but it is clear that the idea of the superior primi- 

 tiveness and antiquity of plants of the Bryophyte 

 type remains a pure assumption, and receives no 

 support from our knowledge of ancient vegetation. 



Neither among living nor fossil plants has any 

 indication of a structure intermediate between 

 the plant of a Vascular Cryptogam and the fruit 

 of a Bryophyte ever been discovered. The 

 elaborate structural and developmental com- 

 parison of the two bodies, worked out with the 

 utmost labour and ingenuity, has brought them 



