• 277 



CRYPTOGAMIA FILICES. 



* Dorsiferce. 



The Dorsal Ferns, a perfectly natural and most ele^nt 

 family, compose the first section of this Order. The 

 early writers, as well as Linnaeus and Jussieu, have com- 

 prehended under the denomination of Filices, various 

 plants which are not dorsifera, but which have some points 

 of agreement with those that are so. They constitute 

 however a separate section. 



Filices dorsifercv, Dorsal Ferns, composing our first sec- 

 tion, consist individually of a fro7id, or leaf heaxmg the 

 fructification, on its under side, orback, either in some 

 part of the disk, or close to the margin, or to the com- 

 mon, or to the partial, midrib. Of the barren flcmers, 

 or stamens, nothing satisfactory has yet been ascertained. 

 The fertile ones in their origin are so minute and ob- 

 scure that nothing of their structure is known. They 

 first become visible in the form of seed-vessels, containing 

 very numerous and very minute seeds, proved to be such 

 by their germinating like those of other plants. I see no 

 advantage in applying a new denomination to the seeds 

 of these and other cryptogamic plants. Hedwig gave 

 the Greek name spora to the seeds of Mosses, because he 

 conceived them to differ in their structure and germina- 

 tion, in some indefinite manner, from seeds in general. 

 The most malicious rival of his immortal fame could not 

 have imagined any thing more subversive of that fame, 

 or of his luminous discoveries. He proved, beyond a 

 doubt, what others had only supposed, the impregnation 

 of the seeds of Mosses, by means of genuine barren 

 flowers and their pollen. This fact is now as well con- 

 firmed and established as the impregnation of any other 

 plants ; of the Hollyhock for instance, of which a young 

 Swiss, in my time, thought he had obtained good seeds 

 without the aid of stamens. If therefore Hedwig esta- 

 blished the production of perfect vegetative seeds in the 

 usual way, in the natural order of Musci, he on the other 

 hand overturned his own discovery, by allowing these 

 seeds to be termed sporee. For a long time indeed, in all 

 his writings, he called them semina ; nor is it worth in- 

 quiring how he came to alter that established term, which 



