184 KETURN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PARIS 
Happily Hooker was able to maintain friendship with both 
these men, though they were of opposite temperaments and 
at personal variance with one another. 
The fact is that poor Montague does make awful mistakes 
from neglecting structural Botany, and is very obstinate 
too ; Decaisne, on the contrary, owns a fault on the spot, 
and is both frank and generous ; his indifference to Montagne 
certainly does not mend matters. The latter is infinitely 
the most careful observer, though the more ignorant, his 
faults arise from giving over value to trivial characters and 
from misunderstanding the relation and structures of plants ; 
the faults of the other are owing to carelessness. Montagne 
works slowly, steadily, carefully, and by a fixed method, 
examining a plant piece by piece, never making any great 
discovery, and but few remarks characterised by originality. 
Decaisne works like a horse, till his strength is exhausted 
and he is fairly ill, for he works himself to death ; takes 
wide general views of things, appreciates an organic change, 
and comprehends it in all its bearings at once, but instead 
of thinking upon his discovery, jumps at a conclusion right 
or wrong. 
Thus, returning to the question of the animalcules in the 
antheridia, which Decaisne showed him in the specimens of 
seaweed specially brought up from Normandy, he adds : 
They were all perfectly simple and easy to be seen. The 
vegetable origin of these, which have hitherto been con- 
sidered animalcules, is very positive, though it may still 
be doubted whether they are a sex of the plant, which the 
dioecious, monoecious, or hermaphrodite nature of the several 
species would argue, as also their analogy to the so-called 
sexes of mosses — on the other hand, they may have more 
analogy to the motive spores of Vaucheria and of Protococcus ; 
be that as it may, Decaisne not only believes them sexes, 
but forthwith cuts old Fucus up into three genera, depending 
on the monoecious, dioecious, or hermaph. state of the 
species ! ! You will no doubt agree with me that this is 
heinous and needs no proof of absurdity to any reasoning 
mind, and how so talented a man as Decaisne can behave so 
is a puzzle to me, for I know no Botanist but Brown so skilled 
