XVII. 



Some BMant 



WITH the ordinary forms of plants and flowers every- 

 body, of course, is very familiar; but of the great king- 

 dom of lower plant-life few persons, save botanists, 

 know anything at all. The ferns we all recognise, and, 

 what is more, delight in them, but even about the 

 life-history of a fern there exists a very widespread 

 ignorance. Below the ferns, which are aristocrats 

 amid the lower groups of plants, come the mosses, 

 fungi, and a whole host of still more lowly organised 

 plants, beginning with the seaweeds and the Conferva 

 (which form the green scum on ponds), and ending 

 with those microscopic free-swimming plants that are 

 akin to the " germs " which people the earth, the water, 

 and the sky. 



At first sight, the Fungi, it must be confessed, do 

 not present apparently any very attractive features for 

 popular study ; but the same opinion may be expressed 

 of, say, an egg; and I know nothing more wonderful 

 in the whole range of scientific research which equals 

 in interest the story of an egg's becoming, and of 

 the development of the germ and the few teaspoonfuls 

 of yolk and white to form the complex living bird. 



Toadstools and mushrooms are the familiar repre- 

 sentatives of the fungi ; but the order is a very large 



