Some words on the life-history of Ly copods 1 * * . 
BY 
Dr. MELCHIOR TREUB, 
Director of the Botanic Garden , Buitenzorg, Java. 
HE results of recent investigation of the life-history of 
Jl Lycopods have been made known to English readers 
in the columns of 4 Nature 5 by Mr. Thiselton Dyer and by 
Professor Orpen Bower. 
In his article concerning my own researches, an article of 
which I would only say that in it the author speaks too 
well of my work, Professor Bower points out, as an interesting 
result of the newer investigations on the subject, the great 
differences in the sexual generation of plants belonging to 
the same genus, Lycopodium. These differences can be ex- 
plained in a small degree only by the different conditions 
under which the prothalli live, an opinion expressed also by 
Professor Goebel in his recent paper on Lycopodium inundatum , 
and this being so, it is necessary to study the development 
of as many species of Lycopodium as possible, in order to get 
a natural classification of the forms belonging to the genus. 
In the other Vascular Cryptogams the classification has 
been based on the asexual generation alone ; not because the 
other generation is not to be found or is not sufficiently 
known, but because it presents in the same genus and even in 
the same order only small deviations from a common type. 
In the case of Lycopods, I am inclined to think that a 
systematic arrangement, based on the asexual generation 
1 Read at the Manchester meeting of the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science in September, 1887. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol, I, No. II. November 1887. ] 
