188 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. [ August, 
both groups are much alike, and if there are fungi at the 
present day whose reproduction is different from that of any 
alge, it is because the reproduction has assumed more and 
more a non-sexual character, until, as in some groups of 
what are called higher fungi, sexuality has quite dis- 
appeared, as is supposed to be the case in Basidiomycetes. 
It is sometimes said that non-sexual modes of reproduction 
always precede the sexual. This is trne only to a certain 
extent. It may be true, for instance, that in the earliest 
forms which had zodspores the zodspores were at first non- 
sexual, and afterward acquired the power of conjugating. 
ut in fungi, where we have more non-sexual forms of 
reproduction than anywhere else, they must, in most cases, 
be regarded as secondary and degraded, not primary forms. 
Fungi are plants which depart more and more from what we 
may call typical plants. When we speak of higher plants 
we mean those in which the organs of assimilation and sex- 
ual reproduction exhibit a high degree of differentiation. 
When we speak of higher fungi, however, we refer to forms 
in which the vegetative organs are represented merely by @ 
_ System of colorless threads, and in which the sexual repro- 
duction is seldom well marked, if it exists at all, and they 
can be called high only in the sense that their numerous and 
often complicated modes of non-sexual reproduction are bet- 
ter developed than in what are called the lower fungi. ‘mn 
the struggle for existence among the higher plants Spee, 
“ ue growing season and have the largest provision of 
seeds and reservoirs of assimilated food to carry them over 
I have already said will 
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