CHAPTER X. CRYPTOGAMS 
I. THEIR PLACE IN NATURE 
331. Order of development. — All the forms that have 
hitherto claimed our attention belong to the great division 
of Spermatophytes, or seed-bearing plants, designated also as 
Phanerogams, or flowering plants. They comprise the higher 
forms of vegetable life, and because they are more conspicu- 
ous and better known than the other groups, they have been 
taken up first, since it is more convenient, for ordinary pur- 
poses, to work our way backward from the familiar to the less 
known, rather than in the reverse order. 
But it must be understood that this is not the order of 
nature. The geological record shows that the simplest 
forms of life were the first to appear, and from these all the 
higher forms were gradually evolved. There is no sharp 
line of division between any of the orders and groups of 
plants, but the line of development can be traced through a 
succession of almost imperceptible changes from the lowest 
forms to the highest, and it is only by a study of the former 
that botanists have come to understand the true nature and 
structure of the latter. 
332. Basis of distinction. — Cryptogams, or seedless 
plants as a whole, are distinguished from the phanerogams 
by their simpler structure and by their mode of propagation, 
which in the former is by means of spores, while in the 
phanerogams it is by seeds. A spore is a simple organic 
body, consisting usually of a single cell which separates from 
the parent plant at maturity and gives rise to a new individual. 
A seed is a complicated, many-celled structure, containing 
within itself the rudimentary structure of a new plant already 
organized. 
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