144 MORPHOLOGY. 



applied to their parts. They have, therefore, no distinct organs. 

 In the less simple plants, merely certain cells or portions of cells, or 

 else cellular groups with a clearly characteristic constant form and 

 arrangement, especially officiate in the formation of new propa- 

 gating cells, and, therefore, can alone be regarded as organs. The 

 single or complex cell out of which the new individual is deve- 

 loped, I name spore (spora) ; the parent cell forming and enclosing 

 the former, the spore case (sporangium) ; and a number of these 

 combined together in a definite form with the special parts of the 

 plant which enclose them, a sporocarp (sporocarpium). Some- 

 times, also, individual cells or groups of cells assume the form of 

 fibres or Iamina3, in order to fasten the plants to the body which 

 supports them (organs of attachment, rhizinci). These plants have 

 been provisionally divided into three groups, the limits of which 

 are still very ill defined. The best characteristic may perhaps be 

 derived from the habitation and the formation of the spores, and 

 we may thus distinguish those growing in the water (PL aquaticce) 

 (Algcs), from those growing upon any kind of support in the air 

 (PL aerece) ; and these latter may again be designated as Fungi and 

 Lichens, according as their spores are formed separately in pro- 

 tuberances of the sporangia, and thrown off with the latter, or 

 numbers of spores are developed in one sporangium which subse- 

 quently bursts to discharge them. 



The same useless playing with fictions to explain what is perfectly 

 simple and clear in itself, which meets us at every step in the science of 

 Botany, is not absent here. Most botanists have not deemed it suffi- 

 ciently abstruse to suppose that cells combine in simple plants to produce 

 simple undefined changeable forms, and much senseless matter has been 

 advanced not only concerning the fusing of leaves and stalks, but also 

 about the formation of buds and all appertaining thereto. In the case 

 of the Marchantitf, which belong to a group of plants in which the form- 

 ation of the stalk and frond is normal, such views, by way of analogy 

 at any rate, might have some reasonable grounds. In the three groups 

 of plants in question, it is, however, a mere childish play of words to 

 speak of stalks and leaves, if we do not understand under the term de- 

 finite products of the formative force, and prove the actual existence of 

 such : things created by imagination exist, however, only in confused 

 heads, and not in nature, which embraces nothing beyond the actual in 

 space and time. 



The expressions already made use of, and which were first proposed 

 by Link (Elem. Phil. Bot. ed. 2.), fully suffice for the description of the 

 Angiosporece, although they are not clearly defined, and therefore still 

 loosely applied, and we may thus entirely dispense with the diffuse and 

 in part irrational terminology, and that confusion of words which has 

 originated in vanity and a love of innovation. 



It is extremely difficult to characterise the three above-named divi- 

 sions in such a manner as to decide at once in individual cases ; and 

 wholly impossible to do so at present, when we are only able to compare 

 individual conditions instead of complete series of development. For 

 instance, it is wholly impossible to distinguish Undina (Algce) and Col- 

 lema (Lichens); Sphceria, Sporocybe (Fungi) ; and Verrucaria, Calycium 



