127 
The Principles of Morphology. 
spore, are to be regarded as the equivalents of the archegonium and 
oogonium in Muscinea? and Alga?. In the two latter groups the 
investment or wall of the female organ is formed before fertilisation ; 
in the former groups (Fungi and Florideae) it is formed subsequent 
to that process, this being analogous to the varying periods of 
formation of the endosperm in Gymnosperms and Angiosperms. 
There exists no sufficient difference between the two generations 
here produced to render it other than a case of homologous alter¬ 
nation of generations in these plants. 
This probably represented the cycle of life for many an age. 
The fact that, as in Vaucheria, the two generations blend at certain 
points, or that, as Klebs has shewn, either can be produced at will by 
modifying the immediateconditionsof life,does notaffectthe reality of 
the presence of the above-described alternation of generations, for 
these secondary modifications are just what might be expected to occur 
in such plastic organisms as these primitive Algae. In Qidogonium the 
neutral generation, as an independent stage, has been cut out of 
the life-cycle, and the oospore divides directly into four zoospores, 
each of which reproduces the sexual plant. This zoospore-for¬ 
mation in the oospore represents the first faint fore-shadowing of 
an entirely new generation in the life-cycle, viz., that which 
Celakovsky has termed the “antiphyte” or the “antithetic” 
generation. In Coleoclucte this suggestion of the new generation is 
to hand in plainer terms, for the contents of the oospore divide up 
into a small parenchymatous tissue from each cell of which a 
zoospore is rounded off which, escaping, the empty cell-frame-work 
is left behind, thus differing from CEdogonium in which each entire 
cell itself becomes a zoospore. Yet in Colcoclicete the actuality of a 
new r antithetic generation is not attained; the complete absence of 
a limiting w r all of sterile cells debarring this structure from 
attaining to the rank of anything resembling a unity in itself. 
This distinction has been reserved for Riccia, the most primitive of 
the Bryophytes, in which w r e discover the first appearance, in its 
lowest terms of simplicity, of the antithetic sporophyte generation. 1 
In the higher Liverworts and in the Mosses this sporangium became 
much more elaborated, and became, although remaining attached to 
the thallus, a distinct plant of an entirely new type. For, in the first 
place, the mode of growth , i.e. the method of tissue-formation and 
1 Hence the above-described structures in CEdogonium and 
Coleochcetc represent the actual and real progenitors of the 
antiphytic generation which is, therefore, very far from 
arising ex nihilo or from being a “ morphological Melchisedec,’’ 
as Scott so strangely imagines. 
