BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 105 



Then by eTolution is meant not only a forward movement, 

 but also a backward movement. So we have to consider depaupera- 

 tion and final extinction of organs as part of the tactics in the 

 battle of life. It is as if the bow and arrow and the rifle had become 

 obsolete by the growth and sufficiency of the policeman's baton. 



Asa Gray* savs : — " Phcenogams are manifestly of one type, 

 while cryptogams differ among themselves almost as widely as 

 they do from the higher series," 



In the following pages I shall endeavour to investigate whether 

 this is so ; that is, whether phaenogams differ materially from 

 cryptogams. From an evolutionary point of view, they ought 

 not to differ essentially. 



Asa Gray further says : — " As respects the organs of vegetation, 

 the higher classes of cryptogams exhibit this same type ; but it is 

 only in the most general or in a recondite sense that this can be 

 >said of their organs of reproduction." 



Xow, I think that it is in the organs of vegetation that the 

 higher plants differ most from the lower, while they differ least in 

 the organs of reproduction. Moreover, according to "Weismann, 

 these organs of reproduction are pieces of their ancestral uni- 

 cellular bodies. 



In the lowest plants — the Saprophytes — according to 

 Dallinger and Goebel, the whole plant is one cell, either male or 

 female. The conjunclion of these two produce infant germs, 

 which develop into the parent forms. This operation is evidently 

 the marriage of two cells of opposite sex, and in no way differs 

 from the union of germ and sperm cells of the highest j^lants, 

 however the organs bearing the reproductive cells may, in these, 

 be modified, and however the whole may be masked by vegetative 

 organs. The only difference is that, in the latter plants, an 

 elaborate aj^paratus is developed for producing the germ and s^Derm 

 cells, and also for bringing them together. 



As to multiplication by division, it is common to all plants, 

 from the lowest to the highest. The former sjDlit into two, each 

 repeating the ojDcration, and goes on reproducing itself in this 

 way. The latter divide ])y bulbils, or buds, by cuttings, offsets, &c. 

 This mode of reproduction being nothing but a division of the 

 parent into pieces, each containing a reproductive centre or bud. 

 The fertilised seed itself is nothing but a bud, plus a sperm cell 



* « Structural Bot." 



