Mr J. Scott on the Sexuality of the Higher Cryptogams. 193 



refuse to attribute a sexual import to these organs in any 

 order of the class, and regard all as strictly agamic. 



It would be mere surplusage, on my part, to give to the 

 Society even the briefest resume of the nature of the evi- 

 dence on which the sexuality of Cryptogams is based, inas- 

 much as the writings of Henfrey, Berkeley, Suminski, Hof- 

 meister, &c., have rendered it sufficiently familiar to all, 

 and must satisfy all who have accepted the doctrine that 

 nothing short of hybrids, artificially produced between dis- 

 tinct species of Cryptogams, will induce a universal accept- 

 ance of the hypothesis of sexuality as applied to these 

 plants. 



Several supposed instances of hybridity have been re- 

 corded by authors, but these not being results of direct 

 experimentation, do not by any means place the question 

 beyond the reach of doubt. For example, Hofmeister, in 

 his work " On the Higher Cryptogams,"' p. 181, states that 

 Bayrhoffer " suggested certain mosses, found by him grow- 

 ing wild, were hybrids between Gymnostomum pyriforme 

 and G. fascicular e on the one side, and Funaria hygrometrica 

 on the other side." Hofmeister, however, remarks that he 

 " has not yet succeeded in producing such hybrids experi- 

 mentally, although he brought together antheridial plants 

 of Gymnostomum pyriforme and plants of Funaria hygro- 

 metrica, with their antheridial shoots cut off. The muti- 

 lated plants of F. hygrometrica always perished." 



In the case of ferns, it has been asserted that true hybrids 

 exist in the genus Gymnogramma. Braun,in his "Plantarum 

 novarum et minus cognitarum adumbrationes," notices seve- 

 ral supposed hybrids belonging to the above genus which have 

 appeared in gardens ; and similar notices have from time to 

 time appeared in the " Gardeners' Chronicle." That now 

 well known segregative individualising power of the fern- 

 spore — if I may term that subordination of the specific for- 

 mative tendencies in that organ to those casual variations 

 of the segments or pinnae upon which it originates — ought 

 to make us extremely cautious in ascribing a hybrid origin 

 to any forms that may appear amongst these plants. Fur- 

 thermore, the hermaphrodite nature of the protlialli, and 

 the juxtaposition of the antheridial and archegonial cells, 



