294 
CL A S S CRYPTO GAMIA. 
Fig. 151. 
LECTURE XXXVII. 
CLASS XXI.-CRYPTOGAMIA. 
The twenty preceding classes include the 
Phenogamous plants; we are now to con¬ 
sider the Cryptogamous class ;—we here 
find the stamens and pistils either wholly 
concealed from observation, or only mani¬ 
fest upon the strictest scrutiny. These plants 
constitute the first class of Jussieu’s method, 
called acotyledonous; their seed being des¬ 
titute of any cotyledon. 
As we proceed in this last of the Linnaean 
classes, we shall find all our former princi¬ 
ples of arrangement fail us, and it might al¬ 
most seem as if we had entered upon a new 
science. The class Cryptogamia includes 
all plants which do not find a place in some 
of the other classes. 
Ferns, mosses, lichens, and mushrooms, constitute the principal 
part of this class. At Fig. 151, a, is a fern, of the genus Asplenium, 
which bears its fruit on the back of the fronds ; at b : is a moss of the 
genus Hypnum, showing two of its flowers borne on slender pedicels; 
at c, is a genus of the Lichen family; at cZ, is the Agaricus, one of 
the most common of the mushrooms. 
Some writer has said, that Linnaeus, having arranged the plants 
which would admit of classification, took the remainder and cast 
them all into a heap together, which he called Cryptogamous;—he 
did not, however, rest satisfied in thus throwing them together, but 
.subdivided this miscellaneous collection into orders; or we might 
more properly say, that he gave names to those divisions already 
marked out by nature. 
Of these orders, which are natural families brought together on 
account of general resemblances and analogies, without reference 
to any one principle, there are six. 
Order Filices , or Ferns. 
The 1st Order contains the Ferns; their plume-like leaves are 
Class Cryptogamia—Orders marked out by nature—Ferns. 
