1355. The leaf-roses would consequently be the involucral leaves of the moss-stalk; the moss-stalk itself a peduncle or flower-stalk; so that in the upper involucral leaves rudiments might indeed appear of stamina.
1356. In the lichens and fuci the whole trunk is none other than seed-shell.
1357. In the fungi, the antetype of the Acotyledons, it may be almost said that the whole stem is nothing else but albumen, the external layers of which only cling together in a membranaceous manner, and represent a kind of seed-shell. The fungus is an albumen-body, which has coagulated out of vegetable juices. In the fungus, seed, seed-vessel, ovary, blossom, foliage and trunk have become blended into one.
1358. In a perfect blossom the albumen is therefore the repetition of a fungus; the acotyledonous seed that of lichen; the monocotyledonous seed-vessel that of a moss; the dicotyledonous, however, is the repeated fern. It may be also said that the albumen were fungus; the germ, lichen; the seed-vessel, moss; the ovary perhaps, a fern, namely, its indusium.
II.—PHYTO-PHYSIOLOGY.
1359. The life of the plant consists in the co-operation of its functions. The representation of these functions is the vegetable physiology or the theory of vegetation.
1360. Vegetation depends first of all upon the two principal antagonisms of the plant, or those between the tracheal and cellular systems, or between the stem-and rootsystems, sun and planet, air and water with earth, light and matter, electrism and chemism.
1361. The functions divide into those of the æther-organs—blossom, and the planetary organs—stem.