CRYPTOGAMOUS OR FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 339 



pogaous fruits, namely, when the fruit is produced on radical 

 branches, beneath the surface of the soil, as in the Peanut, in 

 Amphicarpsea, Polygala polygama, and many other plants. 



*** 646. CryptOgamoilS OF Flowerless Plants, The general morphol- 

 ogy of these simpler forms of vegetation has been very briefly ad- 

 verted to (in Chapter II.) in sketching the progressive development 

 of the plant, from those of a single cell or a simple congeries of cells 

 up to those which exhibit the completed type of vegetation. Taken 

 collectively, we distinguish this lower series of the vegetable king- 

 dom by negative characters only ; saying that they do not bear 

 true flowers (consisting essentially of stamens and pistils), and ac- 

 cordingly do not produce seeds, or bodies consisting of a distin- 

 guishable embryo plantlet, developed through fertilization in an 

 ovule. Their spores (101), or the bodies produced in their fructifi- 

 cation by which they are propagated, and which therefore answer to 

 seeds, are single cells, in most, if not in all cases. These, as they 

 germinate in the soil, or whatever medium they grow in, undergo 

 a development at the time of their germination apparently analo- 

 gous to that of the embryonal vesicle (577) during its development 

 into the embryo in the ovule of a Phrenogamous plant. But the 

 organs of fructification, and the modes in which the spores are 

 produced, are so exceedingly diverse in the different families 

 of Cryptogamous plants, that botanists are as yet unable to re- 

 duce them to a common formula or type, as they have so effect- 

 ually done in PhEenogamous vegetation. Each great family of 

 the Cryptogamia seems to be formed on a plan peculiar to itself; 

 each presents a special morphology, and has to be independently 

 treated, with considerable fulness too, and much particularity of 

 illustration, if the subject is to be made intelligible to the unprac- 

 tised student. Moreover, the functions of the different organs are 

 as unsettled as their morphology. Unable, therefore, to do any 

 justice to so complex and difficult a subject within our narrow lim- 

 its, we postpone our account of them to the systematic part of the 

 work, at the close of which the leading characters of the several 

 orders of Cryptogamic plants, and the principal terms applied to 

 their different organs, will be succinctly illustrated. 



