184 KETUEN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAEIS 



Happily Hooker was able to maintain friendship with both 

 these men, though they were of opposite temperaments and 

 at personal variance with one another. 



The fact is that poor Montagne does make awful mistakes 

 from neglecting structural Botany, and is very obstinate 

 too ; Decaisne, on the contrary, owns a fault on the spot, 

 and is both frank and generous ; his indifference to Montagne 

 certainly does not mend matters. The latter is infinitely 

 the most careful observer, though the more ignorant, his 

 faults arise from giving over value to trivial characters and 

 from misunderstanding the relation and structures of plants ; 

 the faults of the other are owing to carelessness. Montagne 

 works slowly, steadily, carefully, and by a fixed method, 

 examining a plant piece by piece, never making any great 

 discovery, and but few remarks characterised by originality. 

 Decaisne works like a horse, till his strength is exhausted 

 and he is fairly ill, for he works himself to death ; takes 

 wide general views of things, appreciates an organic change, 

 and comprehends it in all its bearings at once, but instead 

 of thinking upon his discovery, jumps at a conclusion right 

 or wrong. 



Thus, returning to the question of the animalcules in the 

 antheridia, which Decaisne showed him in the specimens of 

 seaweed specially brought up from Normandy, he adds : 



They were all perfectly simple and easy to be seen. The 

 vegetable origin of these, which have hitherto been con- 

 sidered animalcules, is very positive, though it may still 

 be doubted whether they are a sex of the plant, which the 

 dioecious, monoecious, or hermaphrodite nature of the several 

 species would argue, as also their analogy to the so-called 

 sexes of mosses on the other hand, they may have more 

 analogy to the motive spores of Vaucheria and of Protococcus ; 

 be that as it may, Decaisne not only believes them sexes, 

 but forthwith cuts old Fucus up into three genera, depending 

 on the monoecious, dioecious, or hermaph. state of the 

 species ! ! You will no doubt agree with me that this is 

 heinous and needs no proof of absurdity to any reasoning 

 mind, and how so talented a man as Decaisne can behave so 

 is a puzzle to me, for I know no Botanist but Brown so skilled 



