EARLY NOTIONS ABOUT THE LOWER PLANTS 87 



it occurred to him to mix the fine brown dust from the 

 back of a fern-leaf with mould, sow the mixture in a 

 flower-pot, and watch daily to see what might come up. 

 About the twelfth day small green protrusions were 

 observed, which enlarged, sent down roots, and formed 

 bilobed scales, out of which young ferns ultimately grew. 

 In 1789 Sir Joseph Banks, who was reputed to be the 

 best English botanist of the day, asked Lindsay's help 

 in sending West- Indian ferns to Europe. Lindsay 

 replied that it would be easier to send the seed, and 

 that the seed would grow if properly planted. This was 

 new to Banks, who demanded further information. 

 Lindsay then prepared a short illustrated paper, which 

 Banks communicated to the newly formed Linnean 

 Society. It will be seen that Lindsay was able to add 

 nothing of much importance to what Morison had 

 ascertained a century before. The spores were still 

 identified with seeds, the prothallus was still a coty- 

 ledon, and for years to come botanists continued to 

 seek anthers on fern-leaves. At this point we suspend 

 for a time the history of the discovery (see below, p. 108). 

 Mosses. Linnaeus observed that the large moorland 

 hair-moss (Polytrichum) is of two forms, only one of 

 which bears capsules, and further that in dry weather 

 the capsules emit masses of fine dust. No further 

 progress was made until 1782, when Hedwig, in a 

 memoir of real merit, described the antheridium and 

 archegonium of the moss, and traced the capsule to- 

 the archegonium. Interpreting the organs of the moss 

 by those of the flowering plant, he called the antheridia 

 anthers, the capsule was a seed-vessel, the spores were 

 seeds, and the green filament emitted by the germinat- 

 ing spore a cotyledon. Such misinterpretations were 

 then inevitable. 



