THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[March 11,1-871. 
plants, including ferns, mosses, seaweeds, and so on, 
there was no knowledge at the time of Linnseus 
what their true generative process was. It was per¬ 
fectly well known that they had a fructification. I 
suppose most of you know by ordinary observation 
those long stalks of the mosses that grow upon 
walls. For instance, in the autumn you will see 
these mosses bearing long stalks with beautiful little 
urns at the top, and these urns contain a number of 
little bodies, which are known as the sporules of the 
moss. So, again, you are acquainted, no doubt, 
with the so-called fructification at the back of a 
fern-leaf, consisting of spots or ridges of a brown, or 
in their early stage yellow hue. They are made 
up of minute spherical, or pear-shaped bodies, com¬ 
posed of two halves, that are carried apart when 
they burst by the elastic ring that extends them, and 
they thus set free the little sporules that they con¬ 
tain. If you take a fern-leaf in fructification, put it 
upon a piece of white paper, and leave it for a day 
or two, you will find the paper covered with an ex¬ 
cessively fine brown dust. If you examine this with 
a microscope, you will find that it is composed of 
very minute particles, rounded or angular, which 
are known as sporules, and every one of these may 
produce a new fern. But, although all this was 
known, it was not known how these sporules origi¬ 
nated, or whether there was anything in the ferns or 
mosses at all comparable to the sexual processes of 
the higher plants. That discovery was made by 
Suminski, a Polish count, about twenty-five years 
ago, although it had been partly made before. That 
was the origin of all our improved knowledge of the 
Cryptogamia ; and I will now show you what is the 
real generative process in the ferns. That spore is 
a bud. The whole of tills apparatus that we call 
the fructification of a fern is a process for producing 
gemma, or buds; and the real sexual generation 
takes place in a very early stage of the growth and de¬ 
velopment of these gemmce. If you sow some of these 
sporules upon a bed of damp earth in a hothouse, 
where the surface of the garden pot is always kept 
moist by the dampness of the atmosphere, and at the 
same time properly warm, you will find after a time 
that the surface of the mould is covered with very 
minute green particles; and if, when they be grown 
a little larger, you take them up, and submit them 
to the microscope, you will find that they are little, 
flat, leafy bodies, with rootlets passing down into 
the soil. If you have not access to a greenhouse or 
hothouse, there is another very simple mode by 
which you may perform this very interesting experi¬ 
ment. If you take a bit of porous sandstone, put it 
in a saucer of water, and sow the sporules of fern 
upon it, and then cover it over with a bell-glass and 
keep it in a warm place,—for nothing is needed but 
water and air to supply the materials for the deve¬ 
lopment of these little bodies,—they will grow into 
the minute leafy expansions represented on this 
diagram. When these are carefully examined in 
the microscope, it is found that there are two kinds 
of bodies in them, quite distinct from the ordinary 
cells. One kind consists of little chimney-like bodies, 
at the bottom of each of wliicli is a green cell; and 
if we look down at the tube from above we see it is 
bounded by four cells. In other parts we see little 
rounded or globular groups of cells, every one of 
which contains, coiled up within it, a little spiral 
filament, which is set free by the bursting of the 
cell, and then it is exactly like the spermatozoon of 
a mammal. Every one of these clusters sets free a 
n um ber of these antlierozoids, which move about on 
the leafy expansion until they make their way into 
the aperture of one of these cliimney-like bodies, 
and, reaching the bottom, they come in contact with 
the green cell, and dissolve away, as it were, upon 
it. Their substance becomes incorporated with the 
substance of the green cell, which at that time has 
no definite cell membrane; but after this incorpora¬ 
tion has taken place the cell is invested with a mem¬ 
brane, and becomes the true primordial cell of a 
new fern, which is progressively developed from 
it. That is the process which takes place in these 
little minute green leafy bodies that had previously 
escaped notice almost entirely. Here are represen¬ 
tations of the various stages through which it passes, 
and the leafy expansion to which I have already 
directed your attention ha's exactly the function of 
the cotyledons in a common plant; it absorbs nutri¬ 
ment, and supplies it to the young embryo, until it 
has developed a rootlet capable of penetrating the 
soil, and a young leaf extended to the air. 
You see, then, what a curious history is here 
opened to us by this minute examination; and the 
same history has been traced out in the Mosses, and 
in the tribe of plants humbler than the mosses, the 
Liverworts. The same again in the seaweeds, the 
common Fucus vesiculosus, so plentiful on our coasts. 
The green and yellow swellings found upon these 
contain cells which again contain these anthero- 
zoids, and other cells that contain the primordial 
embryo cells; and there is in all a true sexual re¬ 
production. There is some uncertainty about the 
Lichens and Fungi, but there can be no reasonable 
doubt that the same process does take place in some 
stage or other of their growth, as it has been traced 
in all other Cryptogamia. 
These are a few scattered notes of some of the phe¬ 
nomena of the humbler kind of vegetation, which I 
thought it would be most interesting to you to be 
made acquainted with; and I will conclude with 
noticing one or two forms of Animal life. It is im¬ 
possible for me to go into the general subject of 
Animalcules in this lecture, because our time is 
already expired, and I wish you to have an opportu¬ 
nity of examining for yourselves some microscopic 
objects wliicli I have placed in the library. But I 
wish to direct your attention, in connection with the 
last lecture, to one tribe of these lower forms of ani¬ 
mal life, the Polyeystina, wliicli are closely akin to 
the Foraminifera on which I before spoke to you, but 
which differ in this respect, that these little masses 
of animal jelly, which are the constituent parts of 
these creatures, the Polyeystina, have the power of 
secreting silex, just like the Diatoms among plants. 
All the skeletons of the Foraminifera are com¬ 
posed of carbonate of lime, except where they build 
themselves up skeletons with sand; but the Po¬ 
lyeystina, wliicli are generally speaking animals 
floating on the surface of the sea, form the most beau¬ 
tiful skeletons it is possible to conceive, of silex or 
flint. There are a great number of these living at 
the present time on the surface of our seas, and m 
the Adriatic they seem to be especially abundant; 
but some of our best illustrations of tins group are 
obtained from fossil deposits, and especially from 
one in Barbadoes. The island of Barbadoes is 
chiefly made up of two rocks, one a converted coral, 
a coral limestone, and the other a sandstone, which 
is entirely, or almost entirely, composed of these Poly- 
