INTRODUCTION. 23 
mon parlance, has induced many botanists to use them indis- 
criminately as always of equivalent morphological value. Late 
research shows, however, beyond reasonable question that the 
seed of the Gymnosperms so-called and that of the Angiosperms 
are totally different structures, morphologically and in point of 
development. The Archispermae is a name given to those 
Archegoniatae which produce structures similar to the seeds of 
the Metaspermae. As will be seen this ‘‘seed” is another 
thing entirely and merits a different name, but it will be known 
here as the Archispermous seed. To show its character it will 
be well to give a description of the Archispermae, to be placed 
side by side with the above characterisation of the Meta- 
spermae. 
Characters of the Archispermae. The Archispermae, other- 
wise called Gymnospermae, are those Archegoniatae which pro- 
duce constantly polymorphic species-forms consisting of always 
bisexual, vegetatively degenerate, parasitic gametophytic 
plants, andan always univalent sporophytic plant, produced 
from a cross-fertilised egg and capable of maturing into a 
structure of high vegetative specialisation upon which are 
developed either one or both sizes of spores, from which the 
sexual plants are respectively produced. The smaller spores 
or pollen-grains are produced in special spore-cases (sporangic), 
aggregated upon specially modified foliar structures called 
stamens. The larger spores are produced singly in special 
sporangia (nucellus of ovule), surrounded with an indusial 
membrane (ovular integument) and the sorus (ovule) thus 
formed is borne upon a foliar or axillary structure which is not 
closed around the ovule. The seed is a ripened sorus contain- 
ing the vegetative portion of a female gametophytic plant (the 
‘endosperm’ and one or more strictly homologous and analo- 
gous sporophytic plants, developed from eggs borne in the 
egg-organs of the female plants and cross-fertilised by nuclei 
transmitted through the hyphal, vegetative pollen-tube from 
the endosporous spermary of the male plant. During, ora 
little before, germination of the seed the female plant is con- 
sumed by the developing sporophyte which alone is capable of 
renewal of growth-activity. 
It is seen by a comparison of these two characterisations that 
while the seeds of Archispermae and Metaspermae unite in the 
point of forming sporophytes capable of further development, 
upon germination, they are utterly unlike in the formation of 
