CHAPTER XLV1I. 



RESULTS, PHYLETIC AND MORPHOLOGICAL. 



IT remains to state the chief phyletic and morphological conclusions 

 which may be based upon the facts and the reasoning contained in what 

 has gone before. They are derived primarily from the sporophyte generation, 

 and the reason for this is that it supplies the most distinctive features. 

 Nevertheless, the characters of the gametophyte have not been ignored. 

 The method adopted, wherever it is possible, has been to start from the 

 detailed comparison of forms within a near circle of affinity : to lay these 

 out in short series which there is reason to believe were progressive, and 

 then to compare the more primitive types of each with a view to gaining 

 some idea of a prevalent original type for the whole group, or phylum. 

 A comparison may then follow of the original types of different groups or 

 phyla, with a view to the recognition of characters which are common in 

 them : and so a conception may be formed of some of those general 

 features which ruled in the remote ancestry, and even in the early 

 foundation of the distinctive Flora of the Land, as expressed in the rise of 

 the sporophyte generation. 



It has already been seen that no definite Algal form now living can 

 be held to have been a direct progenitor of any known Archegoniate type. 

 Certain Algae suggest in their post-sexual phase how the initiation of a 

 sporophyte may have occurred, but there is no sufficient reason to hold them 

 as being in the actual line of descent of Archegoniate forms. The probable 

 relation of the Bryophytes to the Pteridophytes is somewhat similar: for 

 though the comparison of their sporogonia with the sporophytes of the 

 Vascular Plants shows many points of similarity, still it cannot be held 

 that there is sufficient evidence to assume a phyletic relation between the 

 non-vascular and the vascular Archegoniates. Both Mosses and Liverworts 

 may with probability be held to be blind branches of descent, which illustrate 

 nevertheless phyletic progressions that illuminate the origin of sterile tissues 

 from those potentially fertile, and the establishment of a self-nourishing 

 system in the sporophyte. With these few words the Algae and 



