Botanical .-slbjects. 329 



and Avlio knows how many other things, are the work of 

 microbes ! 



The great process of evohition, from the simplest to the most 

 complex living thing, ai:)pears to be an incessant battle of 

 microbes — some inimical, and destroying Avhole colonies of other 

 microbes ; and some friendly, co-operating and helping, as allies 

 and associates, in this incessant battle of life. 



In "ISTature" of 6th August 1891 the following occurs, in 

 connexion with the strugo-le for existence between microbes and 

 the component cells of an organism. 



" These atmospheric conditions (electrical and other changes) 

 need not be antagonistic to the potato, they may even in them- 

 selves be advantageous to it ; but if they help the microbe more 

 than the plant, the microbe will gain the \'ictory, and the 

 plant be destroyed." 



I have not myself seen any erratic spiral microbes in either 

 alg£e or phjenogams, but Berkeley, Klein, and others have seen 

 them, and, therefore, taking their statements as true, I do not see 

 that the idea is preposterous — that the genesis of vascularity in 

 cryptogams may have been due to the introduction of a spiral 

 parasitic microbe in the interspaces of the parenchymatous cells of 

 algre, and that in course of time it became an associate of them 

 and a helper in the battle of life, developing itself as algag 

 emerged into the air into what wi^ now call the vascular system 

 of phcenogams, with all its modifications. 



All this of course is a speculation, founded on what are 

 supposed to be microbic facts. 



