GEtfEKAL MORPHOLOGY. 9 



as in a rose or a tulip, and in their fruit or seed-vessel are one or 

 more seeds hence the name Phanerogamia, or Flowering Plants. 

 The complexity of their structure arises not from the number of 

 the organs, but from the more clearly denned limitation of the 

 various physiological functions to the different organs, which are 

 thus more specialized. At the same time the organs are, ana- 

 tomically speaking, more intimately combined together into a con- 

 nected whole, and the reproductive powers are more individualized 

 and concentrated at particular centres. 



The foregoing may be comprehended by contrasting any ordinary 

 Flowering plant, having- distinct blossoms and seed-bearing fruit, with a 

 Fern, where the fruit is borne upon leaves generally of the usual character, 

 and again with a Seaweed or a Lichen, in which there is not even any 

 distinct separation between stem and leaf-structures, and wherein no leaf- 

 buds exist. 



In Flowering plants we readily distinguish, in all stages of life 

 beyond the very earliest, two distinct kinds of growth, viz. a stein 

 or axis, from the sides of which proceed lateral organs, of various, 

 but always definite kinds and forms, such as leaves, &c., which 

 become what are called its appendages. In Seaweeds, Lichens, and 

 Fungi there is no really similar diversity of parts : the axis alone 

 is represented, always devoid of leaf -buds, and therefore of proper 

 appendicular organs, the axis itself assuming most varied forms, 

 often more or less approaching those of true leaves, but never exhi- 

 biting a distinct separation into two kinds of vegetable structure 

 such as characterizes the higher plants. A distinctive name is given 

 to that class of axes which exist without appendicular vegetative 

 organs. Such products as the leaf-like expansion of Seaweeds, the 

 scale-like plates or crusts of Lichens, or the flocculent " spawn" of 

 Fungi, performing at once the functions of stem and root and leaf, 

 represent what is technically termed a thallus (fig. 1). Plants 

 characterized by the possession of this kind of vegetative structure 

 are called Thallophytes, and are contrasted with all the higher 

 plants exhibiting the coexistence of stem and leaf, which are called 

 Axophytes or Corinophytes (from cormus, a stem). 



But the Corinophytes are again distinguishable into two very 

 well-marked groups, by the characters of the reproductive organs, 

 which, moreover, connect the lower of the two groups with, the 

 Thallophytes. The Thallophytes and the lower Cormophytes (in- 

 cluding Mosses, Ferns, and allied classes) are reproduced by spores, 

 simple structures performing the office of a seed, but in which no 

 embryo or rudimentary pi ant exists at the period when they are thrown 

 off by the parent. The higher Corinophytes are reproduced by true 

 seeds, which are far more highly organized bodies than spores, and 



