160 PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES ON BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 



If this be so, plants that are not attached to anything, but float 

 about in water, ought not to be distinguished into root and leaf. 

 We find some of these. As a tpye of this stage Woolfia may be 

 quoted. It is a \A2iTii classified among phcenogams. 



It floats about and has no trace of root. Lemna is a type of 

 a stage in advance of WooIJia, I do not say that all higher 

 plants are a development of these, for these may possibly be a 

 degradation from a much more complicated and highly developed 

 stage. 



It IS possible that in PVelwitchia mirabilis we may have a tree 

 WcoMa or Lemna — a direct descendant, without much modifica- 

 tion, except enlargement and lignification of the tissues, owing to 

 land surroundings, of these curious and primitive plants ? 



