GROWTH OF PLANTS IN GLAZED CASES. 59 



ON THE GROWTH OF PLANTS IN GLAZED CASES. 



The first edition of this little treatise, 1 published in 1842, 

 is doubtless well known to many of our readers ; and some 

 may remember Mr. Ward's original account of his interest- 

 ing discovery of a method of growing every sort of plant in 

 the dun atmosphere of the smokiest part of London, pub- 

 molecular or Brownian motion common to all minute particles. He 

 therefore gives to the so-called antheridia the name of spermogonia, and 

 to the contained corpuscles the name of spermatid. He unhesitatingly 

 recognizes in them an apparatus of reproduction, doubtless analogous, at 

 least in function, to those of the Florideous Algce, in which the corpuscles 

 are equally motionless, and of certain Fungi, and therefore probably 

 representing male organs. Tulasne likewise calls attention to the fact 

 that these dark tubercles or dots were particularly noticed by Dillenius, 

 more than a century ago, in Borrera ciliaris • and that Hedwig, in 1784, 

 expressed the opinion that they constituted the male apparatus of Lichens. 



Decaisne & Thuret, Recherches sur les Antherideset les Spores dequelques 

 Fucus ; in Ann. Sci. Nat., 3 ser., iii. p. 5. — Here the corpuscles known 

 to the earlier Algologists, and considered by Agardh and Montagne as a 

 second kind of spores (a view which Mold adopts), are announced to be 

 the spermatozoids of the antheridia of Fucaceai • their active movements 

 are described, and the discovery of the two cilia is announced by whose 

 vibration the movement is effected. 



Thuret, Recherches sur les zoospores des Alge'es et les Antherides des 

 Cryptogames. — These researches were communicated to the Academy of 

 Sciences, Paris, and were rewarded by the great prize for natural 

 sciences, in 1847. A copious abstract has been published in the Ann. Sci. 

 Nat., 3 ser., xiv. and xvi. (1850, 1851), with 30 plates. As to anther- 

 idia, bodies like the free moving corpuscles of the Fucaceaz are shown 

 likewise to occur in all the Florideoz, except that they do not exhibit spon- 

 taneous movements ; nevertheless, M. Thuret does not hesitate to attrib- 

 ute to both the same functions as those which the seminal filaments of 

 the higher Cryptogamia fulfil. The Antheridia of Chara (in which Thuret 

 first discovered the cilia by whose vibration the coiled filaments are 

 moved), of the Liverworts, Mosses, and Ferns, are also admirably illus- 

 trated ; but nothing of consequence is added to the facts mentioned in 

 Henfrey's Report. 



LeVeiUe, in Ann. Sci. Nat., 3 ser., xv. p. 119, has indicated the prob- 

 able existence of the analogues of antheridia in Fungi. 



1 On the Growth of Plants in closely glazed Cases. By N. B. Ward. 

 London, 1852. (American Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xvi. 132.) 



