INTRODUCTION. 23 



mon parlance, has induced many botanists to use them indis- 

 criminately as always of equivalent morphological value. Late 

 research shows, however, beyond reasonable question that the 

 seed of the Gymnosperms so-called and that of the Angiosperms 

 are totally different structures, morphologically and in point of 

 development. The Archispermae is a name given to those 

 Archegoniatae which produce structures similar to the seeds of 

 the Metaspermae. As will be seen this "seed" is another 

 thing entirely and merits a different name, but it will be known 

 here as the Archispermous seed. To show its character it will 

 be well to give a description of the Archispermae, to be placed 

 side by side with the above characterisation of the Meta- 

 spermae. 



Characters of the Archispermae. The Archispermae, other- 

 wise called Gymnospermae, are those Archegoniatae which pro- 

 duce constantly polymorphic species-forms consisting of always 

 bisexual, vegetatively degenerate, parasitic gametophytic 

 plants, and an always univalent sporophytic plant, produced 

 from a cross-fertilised egg and capable of maturing into a 

 structure of high vegetative specialisation upon which are 

 developed either one or both sizes of spores, from which the 

 sexual plants are respectively produced. The smaller spores 

 or pollen-grains are produced in special spore-cases (sporangia), 

 aggregated upon specially modified foliar structures called 

 stamens. The larger spores are produced singly in special 

 sporangia (nucellus of ovule), surrounded with an indusial 

 membrane (ovular integument) and the sorus (ovule) thus 

 formed is borne upon a foliar or axillary structure which is not 

 closed around the ovule. The seed is a ripened sorus contain- 

 ing the vegetative portion of a female gametophytic plant (the 

 "endosperm") and one or more strictly homologous and analo- 

 gous sporophytic plants, developed from eggs borne in the 

 egg-organs of the female plants and cross-fertilised by nuclei 

 transmitted through the hyphal, vegetative pollen- tube from 

 the endosporous spermary of the male plant. During, or a 

 little before, germination of the seed the female plant is con- 

 sumed by the developing sporophyte which alone is capable of 

 renewal of growth- activity. 



It is seen by a comparison of these two characterisations that 

 while the seeds of Archispermae and Metaspermae unite in the 

 point of forming sporophytes capable of further development, 

 upon germination, they are utterly unlike in the formation of 



