Systematic Position of the Characeæ

Abstract

THE position in a natural system of classification of this small and strongly-differentiated group of aquatic plants has been so long a subject of controversy, that any additional light upon it will be welcome to vegetable physiologists. I therefore desire to call the attention of my fellow-botanists to the remarkable paper by M. Guignard, “On the Development and Constitution of the Antherozoids of Cryptogams,” in the early numbers of the new botanical journal edited by M. Bonnier—the Revue Générale de Botanique. It is true that these observations only confirm the earlier ones of Thuret; but the care with which M. Guignard has worked out the subject, and his beautiful drawings, tend to emphasize the results previously obtained.