76 



HISTORY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



practical botanist. Besides tlie capsule already 

 described as containing the seed, the fractifica- 

 tion of these ferns is also generally accompanied 

 with an additional integument, called the indu- 

 sium. This is a thin and membranous substance, 

 covering the groups of capsules till the period 

 of the maturity of the seed, each group having 

 its separate covering or indusium, ■\Yhicli origin- 

 ates, for the most part, in the nerves or veins of 

 the leaf ; but sometimes also in the margin. In 

 some plants it is circular, in others longitudinal; 

 in some it consists of one valve, in others of two, 

 which, when the seed is mature, burst open, 

 sometimes towards the nerves, and sometimes to- 

 wards the margin, but in plants of a similar 

 habit uniformly in a similar manner. 



Mosses. The fructification of the mosses, 

 though extremely elegant in its structure, is yet, 

 at the same time, so extremely minute, as to be 

 seldom recognized by the common observer; even 

 by botanists it was long overlooked, or at the 

 most but imperfectly investigated. The ancients, 

 v/lio believed in the doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation, regarded the mosses as a tribe of plants 

 originating in the putrefaction of other vege- 

 tables, or in the' accidental concourse of genera- 

 tive particles, collected together by the alluvium 

 of rains in rivers; and, consequently, as produc- 

 ing no flower or fruit. Tlie earlier botanists of 

 modern times seem to have regarded them in 

 much the same light, and even Toumefort, who 

 published his Botanical Institutions about 

 the beginning of the eighteenth century, when 

 the doctrines alluded to had begun to be more 

 than suspected, and the doctrine of vegetable 

 sexes admitted, at least in part, classes these 

 mosses along with muslirooms and sea weed, 

 under the title of asperme, or plants without seed. 

 But this arrangement was not long held as at 

 all satisfactory; and botanists, who began to sus- 

 pect that a distinction existed even in mosses, 

 were at last induced to undertake the irksome, 

 but indispensable task of a minute and scrupu- 

 lous investigation of the several parts and ap- 

 pearances of individual subjects, during the 

 several stages of growth, with a view to the dis- 

 covery of sexual organs. Perhaps the first hint 

 leading to a coiTect view of the subject, was that 

 given by Dillenius in his appendix to his Cata- 

 logue of Plants growing in the neighbourhood 

 of Gisse, in which he regards the mosses as being 

 indeed without seed, but furnished with little 

 heads containing a powder, by which the ter- 

 minating leaves were rendered capable of ger- 

 mination. But Micheli, inspector of the botanic 

 garden at Florence, seems to have been the first 

 of all modern botanists who obtained a complete 

 view of the fructification of the mosses as con- 

 sisting of a sexual apparatus, which he not only 

 describes but figures, though he appears to have 

 I 'een at the same time wholly ignorant of the res- 



pective functions of the organs he was describing, 

 having mistaken the barren for the fertile flower, 

 and being, perhaps, altogether unacquainted with 

 the true and legitimate doctrine of the sexes of 

 plants. Dillenius, who again resumed the suli- 

 ject in his "History of Mosses," (Oxford, 1741,) 

 a work that still stands unrivalled in tliis most 

 difficult department of vegetable research, though 

 he describes the flowers of the mosses with great 

 accuracy, and also with a view to sex, discrim- 

 inating the barren from the fertile flower, as 

 being sometimes produced on the same, and 

 sometimes on a different plant ; yet, he still un- 

 happily mistakes the former for the latter, and 

 by consequence the latter for the former, without 

 having thrown any new light on this most im- 

 portant part of the history of mosses, for which 

 he was indeed so peculiarly well quahfied. 

 Linnsus, whose original ideas on the fructifica- 

 tion of the mosses seem to have been correct, 

 by adopting as the ultimate result of his inves- 

 tigations the opinions, and consequently the 

 errors of Dillenius, left the subject involved in 

 the same obscurity in whicli he found it ; and by 

 giving to eiTor the sanction of his great name 

 and authority, became unfortunately the occasion 

 of misleading future inquirers, rather than of 

 conducting tliem to the truth. The elucidation 

 of this obscure subject was afterwards undertaken 

 by several contemporary or succeeding botanists, 

 without much success, particularly by Hill in 

 his History of Plants, in which he controverts 

 the opinions of Dillenius and Linna;us on the 

 subject of the fructification of the mosses, and 

 shows them to be erroneous, proving the capsula 

 of the former, and the anthera of the latter, 

 both teiTns indicating the same idea to be a real 

 seed vessel, by means of the experiment of sow- 

 ing the powdery substance contained in it, and 

 obtaining, as the result, a crop of young mosses. 

 This was of course an unanswerable argument, 

 and a discovery of the utmost importance ; and 

 yet the work of Hill is now among botanists 

 seldom heard of. But by thus disproving the 

 opinion of LinntEus with regard to the anthers 

 of the mosses, he was now under the necessity 

 of looking out for the true anthers in some other 

 part of the flower or plant, which he at last 

 discovered, as he thought, in the same flower, 

 and in what he called the rays of the corona. 

 But tliis opinion was soon found to be equally 

 erroneous with that which he had just refuted, 

 because it supposed the flowers of all mosses to 

 be hermaphrodite, which they in fact are not; 

 and because the flowers of many of these are 

 destitute of a corona altogether. Some other 

 opinions were afterwards advanced by several 

 botanists hostile to the former, and at variance 

 with each other, and tending only to show that 

 the most profound mystery still enveloped the 

 subject; or, to introduce a degree of botanical 



