1898] CURRENT LITERATURE 439 
the question! Is it conceivable that the “inner constitution” is anything 
more than the aggregate result of ancient adaptations ? 
Here is another sentence which seems to strike a false note in its implica- 
tions. “All speculations, proceeding from the highly developed archego- 
niates, as to the connection of liverworts and mosses, bryophytes and 
pteridophytes, etc., are, therefore, only products of the poetic imagination, 
arising from our mental-necessity of assuming connections even where they 
cannot be directly observed, but having no adequate support in the facts of 
experience. Their sole value consists in that they incite to the raising of new 
questions.”” What higher value, we may ask, has any hypothesis ? 
We shall have concluded all adverse criticism when we further point out 
that in this section, much more than in the general part, the author yields to 
the seductive temptation to assign definite purposes to certain organs, and to 
say: this is an adaptation for thus and so, with the same airy grace to which 
we have become accustomed in Haberlandt’s Physiologisches Pflanzenanatomie. 
One can hardly help thinking, like Cato, “It must be so: Plato, thou reasonest 
well; else, whence this. ... .”’ Yet, all the while, there is a subconscious 
certainty that the solution is too easy, and that, in some measure at least, we 
are listening to fairy tales — “ lediglich Produkte dichterischer Phantasie,’’ to 
use the phrase Goebel has given us. We are unpleasantly reminded of the 
outgrown teleology by this new attempt to explain 
The reasons of things — 
Why Injuns wore rings, 
In their red aboriginal noses. 
We cite only one example (p. 242): “I entertain no doubt that the mucilage 
filling the neck-canal [of the archegonium] protects the egg chiefly against 
contact with water.” Can one avoid asking evidence that there is need for 
protection of the egg against contact with water, and, if that is furnished, 
demanding proof that water movement is restricted by this mucilage when it 
is not by other kinds? 
But it is in the clear stream that one discerns the snags along its bed, 
while turbid waters hide their dangers. On the whole, this section of the work 
is, like its predecessor, most interesting, suggestive, and valuable. The new 
point of view for the discussion of the bryophytes is the striking feature. We 
have grown used to the purely formal standpoint — even to the Standpunkt der 
Mtkrotomtechnik — which, the author well declares, “is greatly inferior to the 
apprehension of nature by the great bryologist of the preceding century, 
Hedwig, whose view was not yet narrowed by the verbal blinders, morphology 
and physiology.” And so the facts which the author sets before us are pre- 
sented in a new light. Seen in this way they are certain to suggest new 
investigations. No higher result can be sought or obtained from such a 
book, and none so sure to redound to the permanent fame of the author. 
