182 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. [ August, 
The question might arise here, What do we mean by higher 
and lower forms? The terms are elastic, and one sometimes. 
suspects that they have been stretched and twisted to suit the 
necessities of individual writers. It is not quite plain, for 
instance, why we should say that the giant kelp of the Pa- 
cific, Macrocystis pyrifera, with “its branching stems several 
hundred feet long, furnished with innumerable leaves and 
air-bladders, is less highly organized than the small frondose 
hepatics, like Riccia, or such mosses as Phascum. There is 
‘One point on which all botanists would probably agree im 
speaking or high or low organizations, viz.: that complica- 
tions of the reproductive apparatus indicate a high organiza- 
tion, however simple the vegetative organs may be, and 
that as we advance higher in the scale we find more and 
more Numerous embryonic conditions which represent free 
conditions of less highly organized plants. : 
hrowing out of consideration the phanogamous parasites 
for the reasons previously given, there is no doubt that the 
immense majority of vegetable parasites belong low down 1m 
the scale of development, and we can infer from the simplic- 
ity of their 
period. Other things also point in the same direction. In 
the class of fungi, although the sexual reproduction is of low 
grade, it embraces a number of different types, and, as far 
as non-sexual modes of propagation are concerned, although 
‘it may be said that they only indicate an effort on the part 
of the plants to adapt themselves to peculiar conditions, fung! 
are far better provided than any other plants. We are, pet 
th . 
€ species of fungi are more numerous than those of Phene 
§4ms is founded on the fact that, in countries where fungal 
