June 1, 1886.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



235 



importance in the ej-es of their Clod. " The Lord spake 

 unto Moses" (so Moses said), "saying, Speak unto Aaron, 

 and .say unto him, when thou lightest'the lamps, the seven 

 lamps shall give liglit in front of the candlestick. . . . And 

 this was the work of the candlestick, beaten work of gold — 

 unto tlie ba.se thereof, and unto the flowers thereof, it was 

 beaten work. According unto the pattern -vxhich the Lord 

 liad showed Moses, so he made the candlestick "—that seven- 

 fold candlestick by which the lights Ijurning for the seven 

 jjlanets were originally supjiorted. 



THE STORY OF CREATION. 



a plain account of evolution. 

 By Edward Clodd. 



Vlir.— EXISTING LIFE-FORMS (continued). 

 A. Plants. 

 ilLANTS are divided into two main groups or 

 sub-kingdoms; I. Cryptogams (Gr. krujHos, 

 hidden ; ijamos, marriage), or flowerle.ss ; II. 

 Phanerogams (Gr. phamros, open; gmiios, 

 marriage), or flowering. 



I. The Cryptogams comprise as their lead- 

 ing representatives : — 1 . Alg:e, Fungi, Lichens ; 

 ■2. Liverworts, Mosses; 3. Ferns, Hotsetails, Clubmosses. 

 The feature common to these is the absence of any con- 

 spicuous organs, i.e. true flowers with stamens and pistils 

 for tlie production of seeds or fruits. The simplest or single- 

 celled plants increase by sub-division, eacli cell carrying on 

 an independent life and repeating the process of division. 

 But sexuality is manifest in plants very low down in the 

 scale, the mode of reproduction varying a good deal in dif- 

 ferent species. In some cryptogams it is almost as complex 

 a.s in the flowering plants, but notwithstanding the different 

 kinds of sexual organs, there is this fundamental resem- 

 blance between them, that the union of the contents of two 

 cells, a male or sperm-cell, and a female or germ-cell, each 

 of which is by itself incapable of further development, is 

 essential to the production of the embryo or seed. 



The lowest cryptogams have no stems, leaves, or roots. 

 They are congregations of simple fibreless cells united in rows, 

 or gathered round one another, spreading on all sides. At 

 the bottom of the scale of plant-life are the Alx/a; comprising 

 some ] 0,000 species, from the minute fresh-water desmids 

 one-millionth of an inch in length, with their whip-like 

 cilia the two hundredth millionth of an inch long, to the 

 giant sea-weeds or tangles, hundreds of feet in length, that 

 cover thousands of square miles of ocean. The green 'scum 

 of stagnant ponds ; the waving filaments in streams ; the shell- 

 coated microscopic diatoms that people the ocean, tinging its 

 depths with olive-green, nourishing the whales that play 

 therein, and who.se skeletons form deposits hundreds of miles 

 m length ; the rose and purple weeds that flourish in shallow 

 seas, and are cast upon their shores ; are all members of a 

 group which is perhaps the venerablest of living things. 

 For although their generally fragile forms have been fatal'to 

 then- preservation as fossils, there is little doubt that the 

 alga- flourished in dense masses in prima;val oceans, and were 

 the chief, if not the sole, representatives of plant-life on the 

 earth during millions of centuries. Like the foraminifera 

 and other low animal organisms, they illustrate the per- 

 sistency of the earlier forms, in virtue of their simplicity of 

 structure, despite changing conditions, whereas the more 

 complex structures, by reason of the greater delicacy of their 

 parts, can less readily adapt themselves to altered sun-ouud- 



ings, and therefore have a much narrower distribution both 

 in time and sjiace. 



Next to the alg;e in ascending order are those fantastic 

 products of decay, the quick-growing, short-lived Fungi, 

 animal-like in their mode of nutrition, plant-like in their 

 fixity; tlien the Lichens, which, it is now generally agreed, 

 are composite plants, being a special kind of parasitic "fungi 

 growing on alga>. These are widely spread, living, after the 

 adaptive manner of simple forms, where nothing else can 

 live, unwithered by the heat, unsmitten by the fro.st ; re- 

 deeming the earth's desolate places, from treeless desert flats 

 far as the lines of enduring snow ; spreading their flowerless 

 patches of richest colours in metallic-like stains over rock 

 and ruin; encrusting the trees with tint of freshness or 

 touch of age, with hoary fringe or mock hieroglyph ; and in 

 their decay yielding rich soil wherein fern and flowering tree 

 may strike root. 



In the Mosses, whose glossy, many-coloured masses weave 

 softest carpet over the earth, sharing in the service rendered 

 by the humble lichens, the cells have become more 

 developed into rudimentary root, stem and leaf, manifesting 

 still further transition towards unlikeness in jxirts due to 

 division of function. But the structure is still cellular — i.e. 

 there are no tissues and fibres. The mosses represent the 

 intermediate forms between the lowest and the highest 

 ciyptogams, between the green algaa — out of which the 

 liverworts were probably developed — and the ferns, which 

 arose out of liverworts. 



In the Ferns, the larger number of cells have joined 

 together to form fibrous vessels, lengthening or thickening 

 in varying shape and texture according to the functions to 

 be discharged by them, resulting in the woody tissue which 

 enters into the structure of all the higher plants. The cells, 

 which are thus converted into tissue, cease to grow ; the 

 formative protoplasm becomes the formed, having given 

 up its life for the plant, and locked up in the compacted 

 material a store of energy for service both within the plant 

 and by the agency of the plant. The ferns and clubmosses 

 and horsetails of the present day are the dwarfed repre- 

 sentatives of the stately and luxuriant, although sombre, 

 flowerless trees that composed the dense jungles of green 

 vegetation in the Devonian and succeeding Primary periods. 

 These are distinguished as the Era of Fern Forests, during 

 which our fossil fuel was chiefly formed ; and although the 

 palm-like vegetation of the ti'ojiics more nearly approaches 

 its Devonian prototype, it falls far behind it in size and 

 abundance. 



II. The Phanerogams have their flowers with stamens 

 and pistils conspicuous, and are divided, according to the 

 formation of their seeds, into : 



1.^ Gymnosperms, or naked-seeded, the ovules not being 

 inclosed within a seed-vessel or ovary, but carried upon a 

 cone, as in pines and allied species. 



2. Augiosperms, or cover-seeded, the ovules being 

 inclosed within an ovary. 



This group is subdivided into (a) plants having one seed- 

 leaf from which they are developed, as palms, lilies, orchids, 

 grasses; and into {b) plants having two seed-leaves, as oaks, 

 beeches, and all trees and shrubs not included in the fore- 

 going species. 



In naked-seeded plants the pollen or male element fiills 

 on the exposed ovules ; in cover-seeded plants it falls on the 

 stigma, passes down the pistil into the seed-vessel, and enters 

 the ovule through an opening in it called the micropyle, or 

 " little gate." 



Whilst the gymnosperms are, on the one hand, most 

 nearly allied in the order of descent to ferns, the sombre 

 flow-ers which they bear giving them, only by strict botanical 

 classification, a place among phanerogams, they are on the 



