Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/218

 in the year 1750, Hedwig especially on the Mosses in 1782; these works were followed by Mirbel's thorough examination of Marchantia in 1835, by Bischoff's of Marchantieae and Riccieae, by Schimper's study of the Mosses in 1850, and by Lantzius Beninga's contributions to the knowledge of the structure of the moss-capsule in 1847. The organisation, and to some extent the germination, of the Vascular Cryptogams had become better known since 1828 through Bischoff's researches; Unger had as early as 1837 described the spermatozoids in the antheridia of various Mosses, Nägeli had discovered them on an organ of the Ferns which had up to that time been taken for the cotyledonary leaf of these plants, and on the same part of the plant Suminski in 1848 observed the female sexual organs and the entrance of the spermatozoids into them. The history of the germination of the Rhizocarps, from which Schleiden thought that he had proved his erroneous theory of fertilisation with more than usual certainty, had been examined some years before by Nägeli, and also by Mettenius, in great detail; here too Nägeli detected the spermatozoids. Thus important fragments of the life and organisation of these plants had been described up to the year 1848, but until they were more fully understood and connected together they had but little scientific value, the one fact perhaps excepted, that fertilisation in the Cryptogams