xiv INTRODUCTION. 



has given in a Memoir published in the 13th Volume of the 

 Transactions of the Linnsean Society, p. 24. He clearly proved 

 that those processes of the germinating seed which Hedwig 

 called Cotyledons, are hy no means analagous to those of phseno- 

 gamic plants. 



" In Funaria hygrometrica" for example, he says, " these 

 processes, (and only one kind is produced,) made their appear- 

 ance on the second day after sowing, in the form of pellucid points, 

 evidently growing out of the substance of the seed. On the 

 fourth day, each minute plant had from one to three of these 

 appendages, each appendage growing out of a different part of the 

 brown covering of the seed, which sometimes appeared torn, as 

 described by Hedwig, from the bursting out of these filaments. 

 On the seventh day, they appeared, when magnified with the 

 highest power of a compound microscope, to be about two lines 

 in length, obtuse, jointed ; and when growing in water, having 

 some green coloured particles appearing within them, similar to 

 what we find deposited in the cells of the leaves, in a more 

 advanced state of the plant. But I observed that some of the 

 articulated filaments, in the pots of earth, penetrated the soil in 

 every direction, and formed the roots, those filaments only being 

 of a green colour which were growing on the surface. On the 

 tenth day, I found these filaments beginning to throw out 

 branches. In a fortnight, the surface of the pots appeared as if 

 covered with green velvet, from the numerous branched filaments 

 that clothed every part of the soil. About the end of the third 

 week, the true leaves of the Moss began to make their appearance, 

 shooting up amongst the green articulated filaments, and attached 

 to them in the same way as we see the serrated leaves and cap- 

 sules produced in Phascum serratum. 



" That the reticulated filaments, supposed by Hedwig to be the 

 cotyledons of Mosses, are essentially different from the seed- 

 leaves of phaenogamous plants, will appear from the following 



7 



