CHAPTER XVIII 



THE EVOLUTION OF PHANEROGAMS 



The suggestion that there has been no continuous road of 

 terrestrial evolution in the past, that the ocean has been 

 the great factory and storehouse from which at long intervals 

 the earth received its primitive types, each with established 

 and fixed Continuity, and that these were the originators 

 of great subdivisions of the terrestrial animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms, will no doubt not meet with general acceptance. 

 And especially may this be anticipated with respect to the 

 main subdivisions of the vegetable kingdom. For here an 

 enormous amount of work has been done which would 

 appear to negative our suggestion. 



Botanical classification divides the plant world into : — 



(1) Thallophytes (bacteria, algae, fungi). 



(2) Bryophytes (liverworts and mosses). 



(3) Pteridophytes (ferns, horsetails, clubmosses). 



(4) Gymnosperms (pines, yews, conifers generally). 

 Phanserogams, Angiosperms (flowering plants and 



trees). 



The prevailing view is to the effect that all these types 

 of vegetable growth are more or less closely related to each 

 other through primitive plant-forms which flourished terres- 

 trially in the past, and of which we have little or no record ; 

 that plant evolution has followed many divergent paths 

 which, however, if they could be retraced, would lead to a 

 vanished main road of terrestrial plant-evolution. Our 

 dissent from this view is based on the broad principle of 

 The Evolution of Continuity, and admittedly not on deep 

 botanical knowledge. This chapter, however, is mainly de- 



