ACROGENS. 283 
numbers, forming a sort of crest, which emanates from the anterior 
part of the body. The number of these cils is sufficient to account 
for the extreme rapidity with which these antherozoids move. 
These facts overturn all our notions as to the distinctions of 
animals and plants. Here are simple vegetable organs which 
seem to have the power of motion; and if we reflect that on the 
other hand there are animals, as the sponge, corals, and adult 
oysters, which are altogether immovable, we may well ask which 
is the plant and which the animal? We can only reply that the 
distinctions which science is compelled to draw 
among living beings become impossible when 
we reach the confines of what is usually 
designated the two kingdoms of nature. 
The female organs of the plants which occupy 
our attention are less numerous than in the 
preceding orders; a proembryo does not bear 
more than from four to twenty (Figs. 346 and Fed, 
348). They occupy the lower surface of the ieee 
prothallium, but in front of the side of the  seolated Aihegonium, 
hollow ; each of them presents itself as a rounded cavity, plunging 
ito the interior of the parenchyma, and communicating with 
the exterior by a sort of chimney, so to speak, formed by six- 
teen transparent cells disposed in fours, the one above the others 
(Fig. 348). 
We ought to remark here, that the two kinds of organs which 
have been described may exist at once in the same prothallium as 
in Fig. 346, or they may be distributed upon several, as in Fig. 344. 
They are, then, monzceous or disceous. As to the fact of the 
fecundation, it can no longer be contested. Herr Suminski has 
seen and figured the antherozoids in the interior of the cavity of 
the archegonium, and his observations have been confirmed by 
other observers, 
Without entering into details respecting the development of 
‘© embryo vesicle in the interior of the cavity of the archegone, we 
may remark that we only see a single plant issue from the pro- — é 
/0, as if a single archegone had been fertilised, or at least one 
only takes such a form as to hinder the growth of all others. — 
ee conclude, the capsules which develop themselves on the 
