The Vegetable World: Being a History of Plants, with Their Botanical Descriptions and Peculiar Properties

In the Cryptogama the reproductive organs in a fundamen manner form the phanerogames. Here, without pistil or stamens, no ovary, no flower, in the ordinary sense of the word, the yet ductive organs which are designated spores are disseminated 2 in its whole extent, sometime sometimes most varied manner, in certain parts of the vegetable. These spores are some _—

enclosed in special receptacles named sporanges, in other cases they are quite destitute of any envelope. In short, the reproduction of thallogens is often the result of organic dispositions, quite special, which admit of no general description, and which can only be made intelligible by describing each individual case. To examine all the families which constitute the class would be an immense undertaking. We shall confine ourselves to examine attentively certain types of the five families by Alge, Fungales, Lichens, Mosses, and Ferns:—

I. DIaToMacEz. : Crystalline fragmentary bodies, which attach themselves to _ Stones constantly under water, and so obscure in their organisation that it still remains a grave question whether they belong more to the animal or vegetable creation. Ehrenberg inclines decidedly to the former opinion, assigning as,reasons that they exhibit a peculiar spontaneous movement, produced by locomotive organs; that many of them have a lateral opening, round which are corpuscles, which become blue when placed in water coloured with indigo, like many Infusoria; their shells, or shield, are in structure Similar to the Molusca. Schleiden considers that such an artificial ‘nd complex structure as exists in the Diatomacea is without explanation; of great significance, and without “analogy in the ___-Yegetable world.” “ On. the other hand, the discovery of Mr. Thwaites discloses

| oem strictly in accordance with what occurs in the animal

a om. In Fragilaria pectinalis, two individuals closely approxi-ted dehisce in the middle of their long diameter; four pro-

Q

tuberances now rise, which meet four similar ones in the opposite the future channels by which the two frustules frustule, indicating become united, as well as the spot where the double sporangium is afterwards developed. IL Conrervace#. Towards the close of the year, in autumn, on moist, humid days, or after a heavy fall of rain, we frequently meet on roadsides, or in garden alleys, small gelatinous, greenish masses, more or less globulous and folded up. These are a species of Nostoc, a kind of which it is difficult to say whether it partakes most of organism world. or vegetable of the animal of the organisation In studying we shall plants, these curious in the observa- M. Thuret follow tions he has made on Nostoc verrucose, which he found growing in the neighbourhood in the brooks to submerged of Paris, attached

Fig. 296. Mass of Nostoc, stones, upon which many individuals had massed themselves together, forming on the stone 4 carpet of blackish green (Fig. 296). Each Nostoc is a sort of irregular air-bag, as in Fig. 296, folded, rounded, and shut up, filled with greenish gelatinous matter, and consistence forcibly reminds whose appearance one of seed of the grape. In the bosom of a very abundant mass of this matter, we find numerous filaments, composed of spherical globules placed end to end like the beads of a chaplet, and inne of a bluish-green, granulous matter. Fig. 297 represents the sort of chaplet which occuples the interior of the JV. verrucose, and accompantes When the plant 18 matter. the mucilaginous the inter surveyed in its full development, pelicule formed by the thickened mucilage 18 YUP tured, and the green substance formed of mucilage and of chaplets is left to escape. This matter isdis-‘lity Fig. 297. Chaplet of Neste. Hersed in the water with so much the more factity that it seems gifted at this stage of its existence with a very pereep-

tible spontaneous movement. “ In order to observe this phenomena properly,” says M. Thuret, “the most simple means is to arrange some freshly-gathered specimens in a plate filled with water. In two or three days the external pelicule will burst, and the chaplets will spread themselves over the water. If recourse is then had to a microscope, it will be seen that the chaplets, originally very long and contorted in a thousand ways, are divided into numerous fragments of unequal length, nearly all straight, or only slightly flexuose, moving themselves in the direction of their length, and seeming to creep upon the plane of the object plate. Their progress is slow, but very perceptible. If the observations are continued during some days, the chaplets will become immovable, increase in size; at the same time a mucilage is developed by which they are surrounded as in a transparent frame: Sometimes the seeds considerably enlarge and divide themselves, so as to form two others, but laterally; this formation repeats itself many times, and it would seem natural to seek there for the origin of new chaplets. Unfortunately, the increase of the seeds in number, by diminishing the transparency, no longer permits us to follow their increase with the same facility.”

• It is obvious, then, that these plants present an organisation quite rudimentary, and that their mode of reproduction consists of a species of segmentation, namely, the division of the individual into new individuals, an arrangement which seems to approach the a. of the lower animals rather than that of the vegetable world. The NVostoc—in consequence, no doubt, of the extreme rapidity of its vegetation—greatly attracted the attention of the alchemists, Who often mention it, and it enters into many of their recipes for the pretended transmutation of metals. : Spheroplea annulina, belonging to the sub-family Oscillatoride, 1s a freshwater species, belonging to the Confervacex, composed o ong filaments, formed of cellules more or less elongated, -and associated end to end like the Nostocs. Thesercells consist in their adult state of Chlorophyle, a watery liquid, and some feculous 8ranules; the whole distributed in such a manner that the liquid element forms coarse cells, arranged in straight lines. (Fig. 300, 1). Thus the P rotococcus is an individual consisting of one cell only. Qa 2

The Oscillatoria spiralis is a simple vegetable thread formed. by cells cohering at their extremities. The Oscillatoria nigro-viridis, shown in its natural state in Fig. 299, is a simple vegetable struc-

Fig. 298. Two plants of Spherozyga Fig. 299. Three plantsof Oscillatoria ign Nigro-viridis. Berkeleyanleyana.

ture, consisting of cells united at their extremities like threads. is a thread formed of simple cells touch- Spherozyga Berkeleyana ing each other at each end.

In the month of April the contents of certain small cells beaks modified so as to give a spongy appearance, first by the multiplication of these small cells (Fig. 300, 2), than by the condensation of the green matter and grains of starch, like the figure, 3, and by the dispersion of most of the small cells from 4 of the same figure ‘where the great flattened cells represent the superposed cellules. Sometimes the same cells contain a great number of free globular masses (Fig. 300, 4). These masses are young and soft spores, elastic, and destitute of membrane. Long before the contents of these cellules have submitted to the indicated, the membrane proper to the cellules transformations _ presents small openings at various points, whose diameter varies from 1-300th to 1-500th part of a line (Fig. 300, 4 and 5, 2).

But all the cellules of the same filament of Spheroplea 40 which we have described, not present the same modifications and which are finally converted into sporanges, filled with a multitude of spores. Phenomena of a very different nature occur i the meantime. The rings interposed between the uncoloured cell become reddish, and the grains of starch which they contain dis matter the orange-coloured appear (Fig. 300, 5, a). Sometimes is organised in an infinity of short corpuscles, arranged in @ cone fused mass. The rings are decomposed, and suddenly one of the corpuscles is observed to plunge into their substance, disengag® itself, and move in the cellular cayity; then other corpuscles af The movemen increasing numbers repeat the same phenomena.

which agitates them becomes excessively animated, and in a few minutes the whole substance of the ring under observation is an

.*

Fig. 300. Reproduction of Sphseroplea, © eins multitude of corpuscles. A second and a third ring the Same cellules undergo the same process, until the whole

“S 1s filled with elongated corpuscles which move and swarm in

4 »

all directions (Fig. 300, 5,4). Under a very strong magnifier these moving corpuscles appear as in Fig. 300, 6. “It is,” says M. F. Cohn, the Botanical Professor at the University of Breslau, to whom we are indebted for these observations, “it is a spectacle truly surprising that, amidst all these movements of incredible activity in the bosom of the mother cell, the membrane of the cell is pierced at a given moment with one or many openings corresponding in form and dimensions to those we have already seen with the cellular sporanges. A first corpuscle escapes by one of

these perforations, others follow, and they soon flow in multitudes. When movement in the water is at first slow, it is often obstructed by the mucilaginous envelope against which the corpuscles press in vain. I have seen them, after struggling for twelve hours, still agitating themselves tumultuously within their prison-house, return to a state of repose, and finally be transformed into yellowish vesicles. The active corpuscles, of which we are speaking, measure about the 200th part of a line in length; their form 3s elongated and cylindrical, and reminds us of certain small Coleoptera. Their posterior extremity is slightly swollen, sometimes flattened and enlarged at the same time, of a yellowish tint, and granules can frequently be traced in its interior. The anterior

extremity, on the contrary, is elongated into a species of straight and glassy beak, having at its extremity two long cilia, which become very irritable in a solution of iodine, which seems to destroy the corpuscles. These movements of the ciliferous corpuscles are very characteristic: they are gifted with little vital energy, they only oscillate with their beak as if groping; if they move more rapidly, they turn transversely round their median axis, as a cudgel player would do who, holding his stick firmly by the centre, makes it whirl round his head; or, to illustrate it still more familiarly, like the cat which runs round after its own tail, without changg its place. But for the most part they describe a cycloid by a movement of progression by jerks and leaps, as it were; more rare y they advance in a right line; their natural tendency towards the light being indicated by the fact that in the drop of water in which I observed them they massed themselves voluntarily towards the edge nearest to the window.”