CRYPTOGAMIA. 



CRYPTOGAMOUS plants bear no flowers visible to the naked 

 eye ; and they likewise differ from the Phsenogamous in their ha- 

 bit or general form, which is peculiar, but exceedingly varied and 

 dissimikr in the different tribes. In their parts of fructifica- 

 tion, some naturalists have endeavoured to trace out, by the aid 

 of the microscope, organs analogous to the stamens and styles ol 

 true flowers ; but the analogies seem more fanciful than real, and 

 are at present generally discredited. It may, at all events, be 

 safely asserted, that nothing is certainly known relative to the 

 manner in which the seeds of the Cryptogamia are fertilized. 

 Some indeed have gone so far as to call them asexual plants, 

 denying that they possess either flowers or true seeds, but are 

 propagated merely by buds, or, as it is now the fashion to speak, 

 by means of sporules ; and this opinion gains support from all the 

 recent observations which have been made on the structure and 

 germination of these corpuscles. They are destitute of an essen- 

 tial part of a true seed the embryo ; and their growth is not a 

 mere development of parts already existing, as is the case in the 

 seeds of Phaenogamous plants, but parts entirely new are pro- 

 duced. Farther, it depends entirely on the situation in which 

 these grains have been deposited, what is to be the root and what 

 the future frond. The root and plumule of true seeds pullulate 

 always from fixed points determined by their structure, whatever 

 be the position in which they are placed ; but in the grains of the 

 Cryptogamia the root sprouts from that part which happens to 

 be next the earth, while the opposite point is developed into a 

 frond. These are important differences, but still there seems to 



VOL. II. A 



