CHAPTER XLVII. 
RESULTS, PHYLETIC AND MORPHOLOGICAL. 
IT remains to state the chief phyletic and morphological conclusions 
which may be based upon the facts and the reasoning contained in what 
has gone before. They are derived primarily from the sporophyte generation, 
and the reason for this is that it supplies the most distinctive features. 
Nevertheless, the characters of the gametophyte have not been ignored. 
The method adopted, wherever it is possible, has been to start from the 
detailed comparison of forms within a near circle of affinity: to lay these 
out in short series which there is reason to believe were progressive, and 
then to compare the more primitive types of each with a view to gaining 
some idea of a prevalent original type for the whole group, or phylum. 
A comparison may then follow of the original types of different groups or 
phyla, with a view to the recognition of characters which are common in 
them: and so a conception may be formed of some of those general 
features which ruled in the remote ancestry, and even in the early 
foundation of the distinctive Flora of the Land, as expressed in the rise of 
the sporophyte generation. 
It has already been seen that no definite Algal form now living can 
be held to have been a direct progenitor of any known Archegoniate type. 
Certain Algae suggest in their post-sexual phase how the tnitiation of a 
sporophyte may have occurred, but there 1s no sufficient reason to hold them 
as being in the actual line of descent of Archegoniate forms. The probable 
relation of the Bryophytes to the Pteridophytes is somewhat similar: for 
though the comparison of their sporogonia with the sporophytes of the 
Vascular Plants shows many points of similarity, still it cannot be held 
that there is sufficient evidence to assume a phyletic relation between the 
non-vascular and the vascular Archegoniates. Both Mosses and Liverworts 
may with probability be held to be blind branches of descent, which illustrate 
nevertheless phyletic progressions that illuminate the origin of sterile tissues 
from those potentially fertile, and the establishment of a self-nourishing 
system in the sporophyte. With these few words the Algae and 
