236 
Notes on Recent Literature. 
type is obvious and its clear statement gives this paper an important 
place in the literature of this subject. 
The outcome of the detailed comparison of archegoniate plants 
with the Brown Algae, which is the main purpose of the paper, is 
thus not conclusive. It yields no homologies which force us to 
assume a genetic connection between these groups. No organ or 
structure is so similar that it is likely to have been derived by 
descent and unlikely to be of independent origin. To dismiss the 
peculiarities of the sexual organs and sporangia as adaptive only 
emphasises the absence of the resemblances which we might have 
expected to find in ancestral forms of the archegoniate plants. 
Professor Schenck has collected in a most useful form the case for 
the Phaeophyceae as direct ancestors of the Archegoniatae, and has 
freed the comparison from some unnecessary assumptions made by 
Potonie and Hallier. The value of the statement of the case is 
not diminished even if we conclude that at present there is no clear 
evidence as to which group of the Algae were ancestors of arche¬ 
goniate plants, or as to whether any existing forms closely resemble 
the unknown ancestors. 
W.H.L. 
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