1885. ] Evolution in the Vegetable Kingdom. 643 
monocotyledons are inferior in dignity, or, to use a more intel- 
ligible expression, are less perfectly formed than dicotyledons. 
So far is this from being the case that if exact equality of the two 
classes were not admitted, it would be a question whether mono- 
cotyledons are not the more highly organized of the two; 
whether palms are not of greater dignity than oaks, and Cerealia 
than nettles.” Teleologic and anthropocentric reasoning like this 
pervades all the discussions in this work and vitiates the scientific 
deductions. The elaborate experiment that Dr. Lindley made 
and described in the first dozen pages of the third volume, was 
obviously animated by the same spirit of uncompromising hos- 
tility tothe development hypothesis. By showing that the higher 
types of plants when long immersed in water are earlier decom- 
posed than ferns, conifers and palms, he thought he had demon- 
strated that the reason why we find no dicotyledons in the Car- 
boniferous is simply because they had not resisted, and from their 
nature could not resist the destructive agencies to be overcome in 
the process of petrifaction. One could wish that he might behold 
the four thousand species of fossil dicotyledons now known, and 
realize how vain had been his experiment as well as all his 
theorizing ! 
It is such resistance as this, coupled with the power of the Jus- 
siæan method, that has retarded the progress of correct ideas 
respecting the development of plant life. Systems of classifica- 
tion have been chiefly modeled after those of the early founders.. 
The text books of botany still generally invert the order and 
begin with the phanogams, although this is doubtless merely 
intended to facilitate study, and does not at all imply that our 
leading botanists believe this to have been the order in which 
plants have developed. This inversion of the order, however, 
shows how completely the notion of development is ignored in 
modern botany, and the system throughout rests upon the evi- 
dence furnished by the organs of the plants as they are under- 
stood. Nevertheless, it is proper to say that at the present time 
quite a large body of the most thorough students of vegetal em- 
bryology and histology, chiefly in Germany, have rejected much 
of the modern system of botanical classification, and especially 
that which concerns the position of the gymnosperms. They 
prove in the most satisfactory manner that these plants constitute 
a lower type than any of the remaining phanerogams, and they 
