THE FERN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 47 



color of all these forms of plant growth, they may be character- 

 ized as not green. They represent a group of plants that re- 

 quire nourishment from some source besides air and water; 

 some are parasitic drawing nourishment from living plants or 

 animals, while others are saprophytic living on decaying or- 

 ganic matter. Though widely different in character, we may 

 call them all fungi. With these ideas clearly in mind we are 

 better prepared to appreciate the classifications which follow. 



1 25. System of Linnaeus. In the sexual system of Lin- 

 naeus the plants now collectively known as " flowerless plants" 

 formed the twenty-fourth class, to which he gave the name 

 CRYPTOGAMIA (hidden marriage), because in them no proof of 

 a sexual reproduction was apparent. His remaining twenty- 

 three classes constituted what are now called PHANEROGAMIA 

 or flowering plants, in which the sexual organs (stamens and 

 pistils) were apparent then as now. 



1 26. Linnaeus divided the class Cryptogamta into orders 

 as follows : 



I. FlLiCES, the ferns and their allies; 



II. Musci, the true mosses and club-mosses ; 



III. ALG^E, which comprised hepatics and lichens in addi- 

 tion to what the term now includes; 



IV. FUNGI, mushrooms, etc. 



It will thus be seen that Linnaeus simply put under concise 

 definition the groups still popularly recognized (124). 



127. Before the Linnaean system was discarded, his fol- 

 lowers had increased the orders to eight, the Equtsetacea hav- 

 ing been separated from the ferns, the Lycopodtnece from the 

 mosses, and the Hepaticce (liverworts) and Lichenes (lichens) 

 from the algae. 



1 28. Without stopping at the various stages in the history 

 of classification since Linnaeus, we will present briefly the sys- 

 tem followed by the leading authorities in Europe,* and then 

 outline with more detail the system commonly followed in this 

 country, which is based on methods of sexual reproduction and 

 follows morphological and fundamental rather than physiologi- 

 cal characters. 



* Outlines of Classification and Special Morphology of Plants. By Dr. K. 

 Goebel. (English Translation.) Oxford, 1887. (Macmillan & Co.) 



