Vegetable Morphology. 49 



derived from free-living individuals of the ancestral algal 

 form, but has a distinct phylogenetic history as an inter- 

 polated stage in the life-history." 



Though there remains this difference of opinion as to 

 the nature of the alternation, the unification which has 

 resulted from the recognition of metagenesis has been 

 perhaps the greatest achievement of morphological 

 botany. 



Hofmeister's main work was an elucidation of the 

 comparative embryology of the moss-like, Stud of 

 fern-like, and flowering plants the Bryo- Algae, Fungi, 

 phytes, Pteridophytes, and Spermaphytes. It a 

 was for others to follow his example by a study of the 

 Thallophytes the Algae, Fungi, and Lichens. 



In regard to the Algae, a systematic basis had been 

 supplied by such labours as those of the Agardhs, 

 William Harvey, and Ktitzing; and important observa- 

 tions on their reproduction had been made by Vaucher, 

 Nageli, Braun, and others. After Hofmeister's work, 

 however, the study of Algae rose greatly in morphologi- 

 cal dignity in the hands of investigators like Pringsheim, 

 Cohn, Thuret. 



But the series of Algae is so immense that even 

 now, after forty or fifty years of steady work, there 

 seems little certainty as to the affinities of the several 

 groups. 



In the sixteenth century Hieronymus Bock still spoke 

 of Fungi " as merely the superfluous moisture of the 

 earth and trees, of rotten wood, and other rotten things". 

 "About the middle of the seventeenth century", Sachs 

 says, "Otto von Miinchausen thought that mushrooms 

 were the habitations of Polypes, and Linnasus assented 

 to that view." Similar notions existed till late into our 

 own century; in fact, Fungi were almost the last organ- 

 isms to be in any degree mastered by the naturalist. It 

 almost follows from this that there is no department of 

 botany which has made greater strides during the Vic- 

 torian era than the study of Fungi. In a presidential 

 address to the botanical section of the British Associa- 

 tion (1897), Prof. Marshall Ward outlined the history in 

 masterly fashion: 



(M523) 



