373 
Reply to Criticisms ; 
In the same article 1 Professor Goebel offers certain criticisms 
upon my preliminary statement of results from the study 
of spore-producing members of the Vascular Cryptogams 2 . 
I would here remark that this was only a preliminary statement, 
and that readers are not yet in possession of the full facts or 
figures. In the meanwhile I shall endeavour to meet the most 
salient point of Professor Goebel’s criticism. 
While studying the evidence of sterilization of potential 
sporogenous tissue, I recognize fully the correlation which so 
often appears between spore-production and vegetative develop- 
ment. Upon this subject Professor Goebel has contributed 
very largely to our knowledge. The essential point on which 
we differ is the interpretation to be put upon this correlation. 
When Professor Goebel says (p. 359) that ‘ it can be experi- 
mentally proved that the sporophylls of Leptosporangiate 
Ferns are modified leaves ’ — that is, modified foliage-leaves — 
he makes an assumption in which I am unable to follow him. 
That there is a correlation between vegetative growth and 
spore-production he has satisfactorily demonstrated by experi- 
ment 3 ; but I submit that his experiments do not touch the 
question of priority of origin of the sporophyll, or of the foliage- 
leaf, in point of view of descent. He appears to me to have 
assumed that the type of leaf which is prior in the ontogeny 
was also the first to appear in the phylogeny. Now this 
assumption was made by Goethe, though it was expressed in 
different terms, as was natural for a pre-evolutionary writer ; 
by use it has become so familiar that those botanists of the 
present day who entertain some form of belief in evolution 
hardly recognize that, if they hold this opinion, it will be their 
duty to substantiate it. It seems hardly to have occurred to 
morphologists, even yet, that Goethe’s views on progressive 
(fortschreitende) metamorphosis are incompatible with a belief 
in the descent of plants which show consistent antithetic 
alternation — that is, in which spore-production was throughout 
evolution a constantly recurring event. 
1 Annals of Botany vi. p. 358. 2 Proc. Roy. Soc. vol. 1 . p. 265. 
3 Ber. d. deutschen Bot. Ges. 1887. 
CC 2 
