5 8 ° 
Notes. 
one may also designate the state of the facts with this expression : that 
the fruit of the higher Florideae is a product of the mother-plant that 
is stimulated by the fertilized egg-cell. Pringsheim, at least, might, 
in the far-reaching dependence of the fruit-formation upon the mother- 
plant, find a substantial support for his view, that the fruit of the 
Florideae has not the value of a special non-sexual generation. Finally 
we have to consider subjunctive interpretations. I myself should hold 
the comparison of the Floridean fruit with the sporophytes of the 
Mosses as quite justified. But one essential point in this matter ought 
not to be forgotten. One may compare the fruit of the simple 
Florideae with that of the simple Liverworts, and apprehend both 
as in some degree analogous structures. But a very important and 
interesting difference discloses itself, if one follows up the line of 
development in the two series. In the Mosses the effort is distinctly 
marked in the ascending series of forms to differentiate more highly 
the sporogonium as an immediate product of the fertilized ovum, and 
to make it more independent of the mother-plant in its nourishment. 
In the series of the Florideae the opposite tendency shows itself to 
make the development of the fertilized ovum constantly more strongly 
dependent on the mother-plant, and to attain the higher differentiation 
of the fruit by means of essential co-operation of the mother-plant. 
Beyond this no one will wish to assert a nearer relation of kinship 
between Mosses and Florideae. 
It is still more difficult in the Ascomycetes to decide the question 
of the alternation of generations than in the Florideae. Notwithstanding 
the remarkable differences which are to be observed in them up to the 
origin of the ascus-fruit, we must still, with De Bary, regard the whole 
group as a single and united one. But we ought not to connect the 
Ascomycetes with the Phycomycetes, either with the Peronosporeae 
after De Bary, or with the Mucorineae after Brefeld ; but we should 
recognize in them a group which, with its simplest forms, sends out 
its roots into the lowest division, the Archimycetes, to which the 
Chytrideae and other Fungi belong. In quite simple Ascomycetes, 
e. g. Ascoidea , Dipodascus , Endomyces , there appears a striking differ- 
ence in the mode of origin of the asci. In Ascoidea and Endomyces, 
according to Brefeld, each ascus arises directly from a mother-cell of 
the mycelium. In the nearly- related Dipodascus , according to Lager- 
heim, two cells coalesce, and it is the product which grows on into 
the ascus. In the one case — apparently the more common one — the 
