262 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



furcation of the life-stuff into Plant and Ani- 

 mal, of which the first and most immediate 

 line has been traced in the foregoing account. 

 It should be stated, however, that the evo- 

 lutionary succession of Plant-life, as just 

 given, has been sometimes questioned. Re- 

 cently the declaration has been made that the 

 Bryophytes (Mosses) are a kind of relapse 

 from higher forms, as they occur only in the 

 later strata, as far as known. Even more sur- 

 prising is the statement now heard that the 

 monocotyledons are younger than the dico- 

 tyledons, be it a forward or backward move- 

 ment of Plant-life. This view has the ten- 

 dency to undermine the cotyledon as the es- 

 sential criterion of ordering the Angio- 

 sperms. Fossil botany is beginning to supply 

 some missing links like the Pteridosperms, in 

 which the fern-leaf bears a true seed, not a 

 spore like the fern of today. One Plant, a 

 sort of yew called the Ginkgo (Maidenhair) 

 has survived from the Paleozoic and Meso- 

 zoic when its distribution was world-wide, in 

 a single species now found in Japan and 

 China only as a cultivated Plant and sacred 

 which fact has probably preserved it from 

 extinction, for it hardly belongs to the flora 

 of our day. Thus a vegetal product of Car- 

 boniferous condition has crept down the ages 

 m a solitary example, and has succeeded in 



