118 MOSSES AND LIVERWORTS 



For as we ascend in the scale of life we find that 

 Nature, as a rule, tends to attain her ends by 

 more and more direct methods. At all events 

 experience teaches us that with the liverworts 

 the first results of the germination of the spore 

 vary very considerably in different species. We 

 have seen (p. 30) that with a moss the earliest 

 sign of life is, in the vast majority of cases, the 

 formation of a delicate, thread-like growth or 

 protonema, from which the moss-plant subse- 

 quently springs. This kind of intermediate stage 

 is also frequently found in the liverworts ; but 

 while it is sometimes represented by a branching 

 thread, like that of a moss, at others it takes 

 the form of a flat, green leafy plate, from one 

 end of which the young plant is eventually 

 evolved, while in many cases no definite inter- 

 mediate stage at all is appreciable, the plant being 

 gradually developed by cell-formation direct from 

 the spore itself. 



I have often looked for some sign of these very 

 early days in the life of a liverwort, but the first 

 indications of growth are generally so minute 

 that it is most difficult, if not well-nigh impossi- 

 ble, to come across them in the field, and so, not 

 long ago, I determined to see what could be 

 done by setting up a kind of miniature nursery 

 garden in this particular department. I accord- 

 ingly procured some spores of the plant figured 

 at Plate VIII. fig. 1, the Square-leaved Liver- 



