BETOPHTTA. 15 



Group BETOPHTTA (MUSCINE^). 



There is a well-marked and characteristic alternation of genera- 

 tions in the life-history of the members of this group ; the Oophyte 

 generation (moss plant) being the more conspicuous of the two. 

 No vascular tissue, and no true roots. 



Our knowledge of fossil mosses and liyerworts is lamentably 

 deficient, and, indeed, the evidence upon which many of the so- 

 called fossil mosses have been named is far from satisfactory. 

 Scanty as the material is on which the geological history of these 

 plants is founded, we are not justified in assuming that they are 

 unrepresentedin pre-Tertiary times.^ 



The earliest representative of the Musci to which reference need 

 be made is one which was described in the " Comptes Eendus" 

 for 1885* by Zeiller and Eenault from the Coal -Measures of 

 Commentry ; this species, Musettes polytrichaeeus, has since been 

 figured by the same authors in their work on the Commentry 

 fossil flora.^ As usually happens in the case of fossil mosses, 

 there are no signs of a capsule. The figures of this carboniferous 

 species are certainly much more suggestive of the vegetative parts 

 of a moss than any other plant. M. Bescherelle suggested the 

 two recent genera, Polytrichum and EMzogonium, as the nearest 

 recent forms as regards the characters of the vegetative parts. 

 In connection with Palaeozoic mosses the comparison made by 

 Solms-Laubach is worth noting*; he compares Lycopodites Maahii 

 from the Coal-Measures of North America, and L. uneinatus, also 

 of Carboniferous age, to certain of the recent Sypnem. Passing 

 on to the Mesozoic system, we have further evidence for the 

 existence of this group of plants, as Starkie Gardner has shown 

 in his paper "On Mesozoic Angiosperms." * He had occasion to 



1 Bower. Atmala Bot. vol. v. p. 130. 



' Vol. c. p. 660. 



3 FI. foss. HouiU. Commentry, pi. xli. figa. 2-4. 



" Fossil Botany, p. 186. 



5 Geol. Mag. 1886, p. 203. 



