4 8 
A Voice from the Past. 
procrustean morphology in vogue at the time interpreted a fern- 
sporangium as a carpel or folded leaf, the annulus being regarded as 
the homologue of the midrib and the spores as the seeds. 
Agardh breaks away from all this; he begins—“In passing 
from a condition of no vegetation to one of normal complex forms 
there must be intermediate types which connect the one condition 
with the other.” He then proceeds to an analysis of the Crypto- 
gamia generally, in which he draws attention to what we should 
call the homologies which he supposes to exist between the various 
types of sporangia of the former and the seeds and stamens of 
Flowering Plants. 
Agardh sees in these sporangia the rudiments or incipient forms 
of the “ normal ” organ ( i.e . seed or stamen). He expressly discri¬ 
minates between the existence in Cryptogams of two sorts of 
organs, corresponding to stamens and seeds, and the question as to 
whether any sexual function is bound up in them. The latter he 
appears to have judged as improbable. No clear distinction is 
drawn between Homospory and Heterospory as we should now 
draw it, but the equivalents of seeds and stamens are located in 
different genera somewhat arbitrarily, as it must appear to the 
modern student. 
In the case of the Leptosporangiate fern the sporangium is 
closely contrasted with a seed. The indusium is taken as corres¬ 
ponding with a carpophyll, whilst the placenta in each case is an 
equivalent organ ; the stalk and annulus are compared with the 
funicle or raphe, whilst the contained spores are regarded as em¬ 
bryos, their number finding explanation in the recent discovery by 
Robert Brown of Polyembryony in the Gymnosperms. Agardh 
laments that “ writers should have obscured the interpretation of 
these organs by naming the fern placenta a sporophor, the fruit a 
sorus, the seeds capsules, and the embryos seeds.” 
On the other hand the fertile spikes of Ophioglossum corres¬ 
pond with stamens, as also do the sporangia of Lycopodium, 
Aneimia and Lygodium. 
Results obtained from contemporary attempts at spore-cultiva¬ 
tion no doubt influenced Agardh in deciding the incipient sex of a 
given sporangium. Thus the difficulties still experienced in raising 
plants from the spores of Lycopodium would be a determining 
factor in favour of the staminal homology in the case of the 
sporangia; and the same would hold in other instances. 
As a result of considerations of this sort three phylogenetic 
lines of descent emerge from the Cryptogams. First there is the 
Moss—Marsilea—Mniopsidaceae line 1 ; secondly we have the Equi- 
setum—Conifer—Casuarina line, and finally that of the Fern- 
Cycad. “ That the seeds should be naked in Ferns is quite in 
keeping with the Cycadean relationship.” Our author’s scheme is 
fully abreast of views on the polyphylesis of the Phanerogams that 
became current many decades later. 
F.W.O. 
> This is rather subtle, cf. I.c., Erste Aht., p. 201. 
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