246 G. Bentham’s Anniversary Address 
groups of Vonifers ; but the common parent of Conifers, Gne- 
taceze, and other low Dycotyledons te to an age so remote 
as to have left no visible trace to guide us in our conjectures. 
“From such conjectures, however, as have been indulged in by 
phyTogenesists, I gather that the supposed earliest progenitor of 
the plant-races was a simple organism multiplying by internal 
growth and division, that at a later stage, besides growth in 
various directions with a tendency to radiation, sexual elements 
had arisen, at first, perhaps, without other arrangement than 
their proximity. From that stage the progress toward the more 
perfect plant became multifarious, some of the principal courses 
followed being the differentiation of the indefinitely growing 
axis and its definite appendages—the respective arrangement 
znogams, far advanced as to sexual apparatus, the foliar sys 
tem has remained in arrear. But in none of these courses have 
we any evidence of retrogression. We have no more reason to 
believe that sexes once separated are brought together again 10 
future generations than that cellular plants should descend from 
