98 REPRODUCTION OF PLANTS. 



lowest tribes of all, such as the Red Snow, the 

 Confervas, &c. are to reproduce their species, a 

 number of small granules are liberated by the 

 bursting asunder of the cell which enclosed 

 them. They gradually develope themselves 

 into cells, acquire the size and form of the pa- 

 rent plant, and become distinct individuals ca- 

 pable in their turn of producing others like 

 themselves. The apparatus of reproduction, if 

 we may so call it, increases in complexity as it 

 approaches the higher orders, but in all except 

 the cells just mentioned, the immediate organ is 

 called a spore,* and is analogous to the seed of 

 the flowering plant. 



73. It has been seen that in reproduction by 

 seed, each germ has the power of becoming de- 

 veloped, after fecundation, into a separate indi- 

 vidual plant, entirely distinct from that which 

 gave it birth. In addition to this accustomed 

 mode of increase, plants are also propagated by 



* " It is in the spores that the power of increase re- 

 sides; every one of them will form a new plant, and 

 consequently they are analogous to seeds, but, as they 

 do not result from the action of pollen upon a stigma, 

 they are not real seeds, but only the representations of 

 those organs amongst the flowerless plants." (Lindley's 

 Ladies' Bot. p. 270.) 



