172 CRYPTOGAMOUS OR FLOWERLESS PLANTS. [LESSON 27. 



Desmodium gyrans of the East Indies, spontaneously falling and 

 rising by turns in jerking motions nearly the whole day long ? We 

 can only say, that plants are alive, no less than animals, and that it 

 is a characteristic of living things to move. 



* # * CRYPTOGAMOUS OR FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 



493. IN all the foregoing Lessons, we have had what may be 

 called plants of the higher classes alone in view. There are others, 

 composing the lower grades of vegetation, to which some allusion 

 ought to be made. 



494. Of this sort are Ferns or Brakes, Mosses, Liverworts, 

 Lichens, Sea-weeds, and Fungi or Mushrooms. They are all 

 classed together under the name of Flowerless Plants, or Crypto- 

 gamous Plants; the former epithet referring to the fact that they do 

 not bear real blossoms (with stamens and pistils) nor seeds (with an 

 embryo ready-formed within). Instead of seeds they have spores, 

 which are usually simple cells (392). The name Cryptogamous 

 means, of hidden fructification, and intimates that they may have 

 something answering to stamens and pistils, although not the same ; 

 and this is now known to be the case with most of them. 



495. Flowerless plants are so very various, and so peculiar in 

 each family, that a volume would be required to illustrate them. 

 Curious and attractive as they are, they are too difficult to be studied 

 botanically by the beginner, except the Ferns, Club-Mosses, and 

 Horse-tails. For the study of these we refer the student at once to 

 the Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, and to the 

 field, forest, and Garden Botany. The structure and physiology 

 of these plants, as well as of the Mosses, Liverworts, Lichens, Sea- 

 weeds, and Fungi, are explained in the Structural Botany, or Botanical 

 Text-Book, and in other similar works. When the student has 

 become prepared for the study, nothing can be more interesting than 

 these plants of the lowest orders. 



