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the life-history of Lycopods. 
I may be allowed I think to say that the study of the 
Lycopodiaceae has been, for some time, somewhat neglected ; 
yet this order may perhaps claim the honour of being 
one of the most important of all the Vascular Cryptogams. 
In one of Professor Williamson’s remarkable memoirs ‘ On the 
organization of the Fossil Plants of the Coal-measures,’ the 
learned Professor points out the relation between gymno- 
spermous and lycopodiaceous plants of epochs long ago. On 
the other hand, the still existing Lycopodiaceae, poor remnants 
of an older age, have more points of resemblance with lower 
Cryptogams, especially Muscineae, than appears at first sight ; 
and it may be that these Lycopodiaceae are the most interesting 
of the living forms of which we have not yet complete know- 
ledge. I do not consider it at all impossible that there are 
still alive, for instance in the forests of Celebes or New- 
Guinea, forms whose asexual generation is not only smaller 
but morphologically much more reduced than Pkylloglossum , 
and whose sexual generation on the contrary has a higher 
morphological differentiation than the prothallus of Lyco- 
podium Phlegmaria. 
K % 
