1884.} Colonial Organisms. 249 
ments of the mycelium ere sexual reproduction takes place. 
There seems here a preliminary gathering of nutriment for the 
use of the sexual germ. In the Ferns this process is repeated in 
a fuller degree. The asexual spore develops into a proeméryo, or 
mass of cell tissue, within which arise the ova and spermatozoa 
of sexual reproduction, Thus the new-born sexual germ is pro- 
vided with a stock of nutriment to aid in its embryo develop- 
ment, and the proembryo is in this sense the primitive form of 
the seed of the higher plants. It, indeed, in a fuller sense, rep- 
resents the flower of the higher plants, since it acts as a repro- 
ductive organ, and produces fertilized germs. 
But in the Phanerogams the development of the embryo under 
the parental care proceeds considerably farther than in the 
Cryptogams. The young is not shed as a germinal cell, nor as 
a mass of unorganized cell tissue, nor even as a leaf colony as in , 
the asexual bud, but as a mature plant, with stem, leaf and root 
all clearly indicated, and surrounded by a store of nutriment to 
aid in the early stages of its subsequent growth. Thus the seed 
of the plant is directly parallel to the egg of the animal, and ac- 
celeration of development has attained to as high a stage in the 
one case as in the other. In the highest phases of both plant 
and animal life the young begins its individual life as a copy of 
the mature form. In the seed of the Endogen the simple nature 
of its individual is apparent in the presence of a single seed-leaf, 
while the double, or the yet more numerous cotyledons of the 
Exogens, point to the composite character of the exogenous in- 
ividual. 
_ This paper has grown to too great a length, and yet the subject 
is but briefly treated. A fuller consideration could have included 
Many other facts in aid of the doctrine of the colonial origin of 
Organisms reviewed, and also have made more apparent the 
fact that the organs of individually-developing classes of animals, 
as the mollusks and the vertebrates, present no indication of a 
tendency to assume the typical form of the animal, as required 
by the Opposite theory. It is offered but as a partial contribution 
to the subject, with little value beyond its extension of the inquiry 
to the whole field of animal and vegetable life, and possibly its 
efort to place the phenomena of reproduction, and the essential 
ctions between the Protozoa and the Metazoa, in a some- 
what clearer light, 
