314 



PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES ON 



Further, the fig receptacle, through Dorstenia, is admittedly 

 only the rudimentary receptacle of the immense family of the 

 Compositse, and these through the LobeHas, Labiatae, and others, 

 come in contact with many other phaenogams. 



Let the reader endeavour to dismiss from his mind the bias of 

 the word phtenogam and of the terms reticulated leaf, and let him 

 make allowance for difference of medium, and he may see in the 

 accompanying diagram (Fig. 133) an ideal original seaweed out of 

 which the genus Ficus could have sprung, viz., a winged and 

 branched petiole (cladophyl) with bulged-out conceptacles in the 

 axillae— adumbrations of the future figs ! 



The reader would have a choice of either bisexual or unisexual 

 conceptacles, as in the fig, for both types exist in cryptogams. 



Thuret (" Etudes Phycol.") says oiFucus serratus^ that antheridia 

 and spores are never found either in the same conceptacle or on 

 the same plant, so that separation of the sexes on different flowers 

 and on different plants comes to us in phaenogams from a long 

 distance in time, and from the lowest plants. In unisexual con- 

 ceptacles, however, there are barren hairs, which might well be 

 atrophied sexual organs, because in Fucus platycarpus the two 

 sexes are found in the same conceptacle, and, presumably, when 

 one sex is suppressed, it leaves behind it hairs as its atrophied 

 representatives, the antheridia being nothing higher than compound 

 sexual hairs. 



There is among these lower organisms a form of conceptacle 

 which is still more fig-like than that of the Fucus. I refer to the 

 conceptacle of Corallina, shown in Fig. 134. It has also fig-like 



Fig, 134. Male conceptacles of Corallina Mediterranea, Aresch. (Thuret, 



pi. 49). 



