Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/463

] proved decisively that a real intermixture takes place of the male and female elements of fertilisation; this important fact was confirmed by De Bary in the same year.

Now that it was once established, that fertilisation in Cryptogams consists in the blending together of two naked bodies of protoplasm, the spermatozoid and the egg-cell, it was reasonable to conclude that conjugation in Spirogyra and generally in Conjugatae, was an act of fertilisation, only in this case the two fertilisation-elements are not of different size and shape, but similar in appearance. To this conclusion De Bary arrived in 1858 in his monograph of the Conjugatae. This extension of the idea of fertilisation to cases in which the uniting cells are to outward appearance alike, was of special value to the theory of sexuality, as was seen in the sequel, when other forms of fertilisation were observed which made it necessary still further to extend the idea of sexuality. In 1858 Pringsheim discovered arrangements for fertilisation in another group of Algae, the Saprolegnieae, which to outward appearance at least departed widely from those hitherto known in the lower plants.

Thus between the years 1850 and 1860 a number of fundamental facts were discovered, and were afterwards confirmed and extended by fresh observations in the course of the following years. It does not fall within the limits of this work to notice the many discoveries that were made in this part of botanical science after 1860; we will only remark, that between 1860 and 1870 the processes of fructification were observed by Thuret and Bornet in Florideae, and especially by De Bary and his pupils in Fungi, in some of which very peculiar forms were brought to light. No doubt any longer exists that difference of sex prevails generally in the Thallophytes also, though it is still an open question, whether it may not be wanting in some of the very simplest and smallest kinds.

One of the most important results of these investigations is obviously the striking resemblance between many of