The President's Address. By Dr. B. Braithwaite. 179 
inflorescence is a flat bluntly stellate disc, in the upper surface of 
which the antheridia are immersed. In Targionia, a single inflo- 
rescence is fixed at the summit of the frond on the under surface, and 
inclosed in a bivalve involucre. Tessellina and Spheerocarpus have 
numerous archegonia scattered over the frond, each covered by a 
special perianth ; in Biccia the sexual organs are separate from each 
other, completely immersed in the frond, and consequently have no 
other envelope, and thus stand lowest among the Hepaticse. In 
Jungermanniaceae the female inflorescence is placed at the summit or on 
a special branch from the posterior axils, the archegonia being inclosed 
in an involucre, but in Fossombronia this is absent, and each female 
organ has a little proper perianth, while in Anthoceros they are sunk 
in the frond without any leafy organs to inclose them. 
For an elaborate account of the development of the Hepaticse I 
may refer to the admirable papers by the late Prof. Leitgeb of 
Graz, * Untersuchungen fiber die Lebermoose’ (1874-81). 
Spores, however, are not the sole means of reproduction in mosses, 
but gemmae or buds are not unfrequently produced, in the axils of 
leaves, on the nerve or laminae of the leaves themselves, or in special 
terminal receptacles, and these falling to the earth, take root and 
develope new plants. Protonema is, however, usually first formed, 
from which the plants originate, and this protonema may spring from 
branches of root-hairs, or even from a single cell of a detached leaf, as 
has been noticed in Funaria hygrometrica, and in this way a species 
is propagated when the sporogone is never or but rarely produced. 
To sum up, the Fern-spore, on germinating, does not produce a 
single plant as the seed of a phaenogamous plant does, but a temporary 
nursing-mother prothallus, this also bears the sexual organs, from 
which a numerous progeny of asexual ferns spring. In the Moss- 
groups the first stage is asexual, and from it bud off the enduring 
sexual plants, which go on growing by annual innovations ; the 
sexual organs placed on the same plant or on different plants, the 
process of impregnation in all of them being identical in detail with 
that of the highest animals. 
We thus see what the Microscope has done in revealing to us all 
the stages of one of the most important processes of organic nature, 
for the continuance of the species, next to that of the individual, is the 
most dominant of all vital functions. And surely this suggests a 
thought on the mystery of life, a divine afflatus, impressed on creation 
at the beginning, which once lost, all the resources of science can 
never restore, yet handed down to us unaltered through countless 
bygone centuries, delighting us in our own short enjoyment of it 
by the endless manifestations of structure and beauty it is ceaselessly 
yet silently elaborating, and passing on unchanged through all the 
ages which are yet to come, doubtless to be still further unfolded 
to us in the life beyond. 
