142 MORPHOLOGY. 



substitutes that have been proposed, tried like some new article of 

 fashion, and then rejected, as Endogenes and Exogenes, Amphibryce and 

 Acramphibryce, Loxince and Orthoince, Exorhizce and Endorhizce, &c., 

 we shall still have to return to the old division, as being the best and 

 most applicable of all, because it rests upon what is most essential in the 

 morphological law of development. It is only to be lamented that so 

 much valuable time and such fine powers, which might be devoted to 

 well-grounded observations on the law of development, and consequently 

 to the special furtherance of science, should have been wasted in this 

 utterly useless game of system-making. 



I must, however, be permitted to remark, that, with very few excep- 

 tions, all our classifications of plants into individual larger or smaller 

 groups are still so unstable, that we are obliged almost in every case to 

 designate certain forms as mere transitions from one group to another. 

 In order to avoid misconception on this head, we must, however, consider 

 more attentively what is meant by the term Transition. We may inter- 

 pret it in three different ways. In the first place, it may mean an 

 individual transition of the nature that occurs when one and the same 

 being passes through different phases of its existence at different times, 

 and may therefore at various periods fall under various specific heads. 

 We have already pointed out the absurdity of such an idea ; it has never- 

 theless met with supporters among persons who have given evidence, by 

 the maintenance of such views, of their own ignorance and thorough 

 want of philosophical clearness of understanding. In the present highly 

 deficient state of our knowledge regarding simple vegetable organisms, 

 a transitional stage of development must often be mistaken, for a time, to 

 be an independent species ; but as soon as further observations have 

 shown the course of its development to another species, the transiently 

 established classification falls to the ground, and we are as little disposed 

 to regard the plant as a separate species as we should be thus to de- 

 signate the pollen -granule and the seed or the ovum in animals. The 

 matter appears so simple, that we should be struck with astonishment that 

 any one could even have arrived at the conclusions embraced by Agardh*, 

 Hornschucht, Meyen J, and others, but that we know that Schelling's 

 so-called Philosophy of Nature has misled so many into the belief that there 

 is something scientific in the subtleties of comparison and analogy. The 

 proembryo of Mosses is as little a Conferva as the pollen-granule of the 

 Zostera marina. Both are dependent structures, which only acquire their 

 full signification in the complete connection of the law of development. 

 Thus the whole of what Agardh and others have enlarged so much upon 

 simply amounts to this, that Mosses as well as all other plants consist of 

 differently formed cells at various periods of their existence. 



The second interpretation that may be given to the expression 

 transition, does designate actually different species, the characters of 

 which are so similar in the two most immediately allied species, or ap- 

 proach so nearly through the individual variations, that it is impossible 

 to lay hold of any one individual character which may separate the 

 whole into two groups, although their extremes seem to indicate or 

 demand some such division. Here we must in the first place remember 



* Allgemeine Biologie der Pflanzen, from the Swedish by Creplin. Greifswald, 

 1832, 42. 



f Act. Acad. Leojj. Car. x. 



j: Robert Brown's Miscellaneous Writings. [German edition, in 5 vols. For the 

 purpose of illustration, it contains the papers and remarks of other botanists TRANS.] 



